#15 From The Foundation: Jonny's Had it All Along

It's like he says in the podcast every one of these podcasts is different and everybody has a different testimony , a different place that they're coming from , and his is I don't even know how to describe it , but is from someone who's been in the church , born in the church and just kind of the journey that he's been on and it's been an incredible journey where

God has just been revealing himself in a different way . And so I feel like I say the same thing at the beginning of every podcast , that there's just God revealing his love to his people , and I mean I wish I could say someone else , but I can't , and I actually probably don't even wish I could say something else .

So it is , it's good stuff and I'm excited that you get to listen to it and hear his heart . One more thing what is today ? Today is the 23rd , in about three weeks from tomorrow , valentine's Day 2021 , love Reality is dropping something crazy . I've been trying to warn you all , man , but I'm trying to tell y'all I've looked at it , it's awesome .

I can't wait till you guys get to see it and experience it and go through it , and it's just going to be a huge blessing , I know , to so many people . So keep your eyes and ears peeled for that . And outside of that , strap in , buckle up , love y'all , appreciate y'all .

But I think at that point , as I was like coming into high school , it would be insecurities of wanting to be popular or wanting people's attention , and spiked in that environment of high school . Looking back , I'm kind of actually analyzing this as I'm thinking about it right now .

But I think that just manifested in this just like a lust for attention , and so that was at the cost of , it was at the expense a lot of times of my teachers or other students , and so it was like I remember this wasn't who I really was growing up .

I was generally a nice enough kid , I think , but yeah , at that point it was just like it wasn't really based on a relationship with God , it was just based on default , growing up in a Christian bubble .

And so that year I remember getting kicked out of a and it was just because I was being hyper , just being disrespectful , just talking over teachers , just trying to get people to laugh , just being a class clown . One memory sticks out with me , maybe towards the end of that year .

So I was running with this other dude that we were were kind of partners in crime in that , and he would egg me on and I probably did to him too . And I remember him like saying , okay , I'm going to sit , I'm going to like get on my hands and knees behind this girl and you go and push her and we'll like do this in front of everybody .

I was like , okay , that's funny . And so he totally he dove right behind her . I ran up and pushed her this is a friend of mine and she fell over backwards and I like what I was expecting was laughter everywhere , like even from her , I guess .

I think it was just like supposed to be all funny and like the look on her face , like the pain on her face and just like the embarrassment and the sadness . I think there was a like a little bit of a pinprick , of a moment of like what are you doing ? But it didn't really stop that year until the summer after my life .

Like right , when you're telling the story , like six of them jump up in my mind and it was me and my buddy , michael Paradise , that were doing all of this , and shout out to Michael Paradise , I love him , he's , he's a wonderful person , but just gut wrenching , where we did something at somebody else's expense and we thought they were going to laugh , they did

not laugh .

Anyway , after that freshman year , going into the summer , my mom came to me at one point and she's like I don't know if she was calling me Johnny at that point or Jonathan or whatever , but she's like the school board had a meeting to decide whether they want to let you back in next year . I was like what , why ?

And she's like because you're just so disrespectful and so hard on your teachers . And I was like what ? Like that was a first moment for me that I kind of realized it was serious a little bit and it kind of got me thinking .

And then going into that summer , also thinking about coming back together with friends and realizing like I didn't really actually feel like I had any friends , like as much as I could easily be in the center of a group and making people laugh , and

I wasn't like I don't know , I was in the mix , you know , if people were hanging out , but getting to the summer and realizing I didn't actually have any person that I thought cared about me in any of these groups , which was important to me because I've , you know , this insecurity .

But I just realized like everything was shallow , like everything that I'd been doing that year led to all of this shallowness and it was like in the pursuit of wanting friendships and relationships in a sense , in a way wanting affirmation more , and realizing after the whole year of it all like having nothing to show for it and just feeling really lonely and

disconnected from everyone . So that got me thinking too . So my heart was kind of like opening up and so I'm a child of the early 80s Christian family home . I listened to Carmen . I know you knew Carmen was coming .

Okay , I'm just jumping ahead now but riding with you and Natalie and Alyssa in the car and I like tried to play one Carmen song for you guys and clowned on so hard that I couldn't yeah , couldn't even finish the song . No , I think that I think that guy has like the most album sold , or of Christian records ever or something .

I think he holds some record which is kind of amazing , like his sound is . Totally I get it . Like you grow up listening to it and that wasn't your only first cassette tape that you had and you had nothing else to listen to . I get it . His style is interesting . He's like a Italian New Yorker that tells stories with his music . Anyway .

So I'm listening to this song that I'd listened to many times growing up . And it's a Friday night , we're heading you know it's for us we're going into Sabbath . I'm laying in my bed and just trying to fall asleep and I'm listening to this song . I've heard it I don't know how many times .

It's a song about Jericho Joshua and in the end there's like a crescendo of the walls coming down . So I did not see this coming . God snuck up on me in bed that night and as I was like listening to the crescendo , all of a sudden , like his Holy Spirit just was like you've got walls around your heart that are coming down tonight and I was like what ?

And all of a sudden , like a sensitivity just opened up and just I just started bawling in bed and like his love just kind of flowed over me and I'd never felt that before . It was like my first one on one personal contact with God and I was probably like 13 or 14 .

And that's kind of what I attribute as being the first , like the first nudge of the needle in a new direction and it didn't change a lot for me .

But one thing it changed was like I just knew God was good , I was a goody , two shoes , I'd never done drugs , but like into drug addicts who find Jesus , they'll tell you like , listen to , like that guy from corn , his testimony , brian head or whatever you know , whatever his name is .

Like he'll tell you , getting like an experience with Jesus , like that is better than any drug that you could ever have .

And it's easy to see why God doesn't relate to us on that level at all times , because then we'd just be going to him for a hit , like we would be going to him for ourselves because it feels so good , but feeling that that one night was enough to change my life forever to the point where it was like I at least know that that's what I want , like he's

what I want . He is so good . I want to spend eternity with him . It was enough to plant all of those seeds , like in that one night and in my sophomore year didn't like it , wasn't like all of a sudden , everything was a 180 , but it definitely changed .

It changed my life , it changed my relationships and then by time we got to my senior year , maplewood it was . It was all positive relationships and God was a big part of my life .

We're growing in intimacy , we're growing in perspective , like there's growth , we're growing from grace to grace , like we're in , we're living in a grace that's awesome and free and beautiful and wonderful and it's only getting better Like , and that's kind of what I think my , my perspective experience has been with God .

I think that reputation from even just freshman year followed me for quite a while . It was that potent , but it it was different .

By time I was a senior and actually you know we can get into it I felt like college was a little bit of a regression for me , like one of the highest being , you know , college in high school for me , of of walking comfortably in a relationship with God and like feeling his presence , his spirit , manifesting through me .

It was probably my senior year of high school when I got to college . There was like so I went , I went to Andrews and Andrews University in Michigan oh , was it from Minnesota ? And I've I've pretty much been like kind of a close to home kind of kid .

And so I go over there and you know the experience has been so good by my senior year at Maplewood and the friendships I had , and like hardly any of my friend came over there . I get over there and kind of discover that you know , other people have had their close friends as well .

They're all coming in and it's I'm finding it hard to like break into these circles and I'm finding it hard to make new friendships and it's it had the effect kind of starting to send me to a little bit of a darker place like my freshman and sophomore year . I remember this is just a quick little testimony insert , but I remember , like my first birthday .

After getting to my birthdays in November , school starts , you know , august . So a few months into school I've had a few months to experience like the loneliness of trying to break into friend groups . That's not really working .

I've got this roommate that we're kind of super estranged and just totally into very different things and so we kind of don't talk like in the evenings . Well , if we are both in the room which we try to avoid we'll just sit in silence and listen to what I . What I thought at the time was really weird music .

I met that brother at a G Y C later and found out we both like let let Jesus transform our lives and we were so excited with each other . But at that time we were kind of like trying to avoid each other .

I , on my birthday , I was dorm room with a pile of homework , no friends and feeling sick and just it was like one of the lowest moments of like just feeling awful and I think something inside me just kind of cried out to God like this is so , and like within a few minutes I hear this knock on my door .

This only happened once , you know , in the three years that I was in the dorm there , but it happened that night . All of a sudden I hear a knock at the door and some some brother from the dorm was walking around just asking if people need prayer for anything . He came to my door and just asked me like what can I pray for you for ?

And it was probably some like really selfish request or something , but . But God used that moment to just be like I'm here with you . Which was sweet , but but the experience that , that loneliness and anyway , just it wasn't what I was expecting . I was expecting more of high school kind of sent me down into a dark place .

So you know , I've been listening to , to the interviews . I just got to listen to Lauren fog you interviewed . She was there at one point and I remember I think this was the only time I admitted it to anybody , but I was in a car with her driving around and she was like kind of asking me like I think I was .

I was visibly like manifesting that I'm in a little bit of a darker place and I think she started asking questions and I think that was the only time I admitted to somebody that I felt like , yes , I want to be close to God in an ultimate long run kind of a way . Okay , so here's probably one of the first lies that I could identify .

It was the lie that you have to go far from God to be close to Him . That's what I'd always seen . It's all the testimonies I'd ever heard .

It felt like the only way to get to God was via rubber band and I , you know , in that first freshman summer experience , I knew enough that I didn't want to run away from Him , so I was doing this really awkward , like run , not run like .

But it was just like my pansy attempt to push God away because I wanted to have a testimony where I could come back and be more intimate with Him . But that was actually the thing that I was actually wanting , so it was like it was hard to push Him away . It was really like just a I don't know a silly place to be in .

So he gets his he man and he puts it in his bag and he's like and now I'm leaving , and I just think of you passive , aggressive with God , or maybe aggressive aggressive with God , just like I want to leave , but I want to have this experience with you , but I haven't had it . So maybe this like kind of is that kind of what it was .

Explain that a little bit more .

When I was growing up , one of the things that was most comforting my mom would say to me when she was talking to me in at night and be like , you know , I love your dad more than you , right , and she was joking and we'd both laugh because , like , we both knew that she loved the hell out of me , you know , like she just loved me , clearly .

And so in her saying that is like saying your , your nest is firm like you're , you're totally safe and protected , in a sense , in her funny way of doing it , but they were grace based . You know , I think we're all kind of growing and understanding the finished work more than we did then , but it was a grace based .

Home I had a picture of God as a loving God . They never judged me or showed like . They never gave me that picture of God that he's judgmental , overbearing . I think they gave me freedom to grow and stuff , just like . That's that's what any of us would want and I'm grateful to God that have it .

I guess I get that that's not the typical story , but because of that I just kind of grew up with nothing to push against , nothing , to rebellious . I do not rebellious not because I don't challenge things or question things , but because there was nothing to .

They weren't pushing against me so I didn't push against them and so I was kind of pansy if , like compared to listening to some people's stories , like a person who just like , grows up with God , just walks with God , never has like that tragic moment that you know , I think Satan

loves to have that thing in somebody's childhood that he can use as a hook to bring back like a hook in them and he can come back to it over and over again and play it like a fiddle and I think he just somehow missed his chance on that with me .

And so then he plays the other side , which turns into , as you're growing up and getting into your spiritual walk , like a complacent . For me it started out as complacency in Christianity , like nothing in Christianity could amaze me or interest me , because it was all just so always there . So , plain , yeah .

And then , at a different stage in life , when it is really passionate , that can also become pride and self righteousness , because there's not like these hang ups that are that he's getting me with you know what I'm talking about like something that he's always bringing back to me well , well , but what about this ? You know ?

Like I didn't have that honestly , so he goes hard for like the self righteousness or something like that .

But , back near the we got married 2006 , and it was probably within the first year or two , maybe , maybe about two years into marriage that I was very much like the poster for like a laodicean Christian , just very I don't know . I was not .

I was not hung up on feeling like God's judging me , I wasn't , you know , feeling unforgiven , but at the same time I was not feeling like the beauty and the amazingness of the gospel manifesting in my life either . And God did a really weird thing actually .

So probably 2008 , I'm thinking Alyssa and I we were living in Egon , minnesota , which is in the Minneapolis Twin Cities metro area , and my family lived in Hutchinson , which we've moved here . 25 years ago Now , alyssa and I live in Hutchinson . You guys lived in Hutchinson . We missed that . Yeah , we sure did . No longer live in Hutchinson .

We had some good times with you here . A lot of people have come and gone through here , it feels like . But anyway , we were in this stage of life where almost every weekend we would get in a car and leave our apartment . We had no other friends there . We knew nobody .

It seemed like no young people , especially no Christian young people and especially no Adventist young people .

It was okay Funny side note like we were in that phase of life where if we met like a non Christian or non Adventist Christian friend , we were like we have a non Adventist friend and we'd probably start sharing with them like Doug bachelor videos and stuff like that , and it was like this big deal . That was probably the stage of life .

I think we're in that at that point . Oh my , my three year olds just coming in the room . Hey , lincoln , can you come back in later ? You're supposed to be sleeping . Can you shut that door and come back a little later ? Okay , thank you . So that was a normal thing for us on the weekends to be driving from Egan to Hutchinson .

Well , all of a sudden , this one random Friday after work , we're doing that and we're in the car and as we're leaving Egan , we look up in the sky and it was a partly cloudy day , it was a beautiful day . But there was , like this cloud that looked very much different than all the others .

Like it looked like it was way far beyond the other clouds and it looked like the size of a man's hand and it looked like shiny and shimmery . And we're like at like almost immediately , like whoa , look at that cloud . Like it looks like the second coming , am I right ? And it was started out as kind of a joke .

And so we're driving , you know , 15 minutes into the drive , a bunch of clouds have already , you know , passed overhead and the landscape of the sky is totally different . Except for that , that cloud is like it's still there and it's in the exact same position relative to our car , whereas everything else has changed .

And so , 15 minutes into the drive , we're like that's kind of weird , look at that thing that's still up there . And so , 15 , 30 minutes into the drive , we're looking up and everything , you know , all the clouds have changed and passed , and it's still there .

And we're like that's kind of that is weird , like all of a sudden , like it's turning from like joking to kind of like a little bit of serious and we started like talking to each other like what , what if Jesus was coming right now ? And I was in a .

I was in a place at that point where , like I had never studied really the Bible deeply for myself , I was just totally living on the laurels of you know my pedigree of being a fourth or fifth generation Adventist and all the things that I've heard , and so I had no like anchor , no like solidity under what I believe or why .

But I was like I feel like certain things are supposed to happen before Jesus comes right , Like there's certain things we've been told are coming , they haven't happened . And so like 45 minutes into this drive and that cloud is still there . I'm like actually checking my heart like what if Jesus is right now ?

And like asking internally how would I feel about that ? And realizing the answers coming back like not all good for multiple reasons , like what were ?

the reasons , if he is coming back in this moment for one thing , like the classic the things I want to do list , I'd rather be here on earth for a little while longer because I want to do XYZ , I want to have kids and raise a family and probably go skydiving , do some other things , like as if I couldn't do , like a skydiving extravaganza , I don't know .

Anyway , like that was one . The other one was also cloud . I don't know where I stand with God and not fully , like I didn't . All of a sudden I realized that assurance wasn't there and so the drive is an hour long . That cloud stayed out , you know , in front of our car , relative to our car , exactly the same .

For that whole hour and by time we got to my parents' house I was like shaken and I run inside and I'm like do you guys have a great controversy ? I had never read it , I never had anybody read it to me and I didn't even know what was in it , except for that . I thought it would tell me . You know how it all goes down in the end .

Yeah , I think so and honestly , you know , we found it in the back of a bookshelf . We had to dust it off , and I did . You already know , but I'm not an avid reader . I wish I was , can't lie , can't say that and I probably started trying to like start the great controversy three or four times over the next month and it was not taking .

And so I was like , okay , I'm going to do this . I remember being in the airport at one point and I had it with me in a backpack and I was like , I'm going to do this , I'm going to flip to the back of the book and see like which chapter headings look interesting and I'm just going to dive in and start there .

So I remember starting on like the last chapter and reading it and I was like , oh , that looks interesting , flip back a chapter . I was like , okay , that one too , and flip back a little more . I'm like , oh , I definitely want to know about that . Flip back a little more , okay , okay , by time I'd flip back far enough .

I was like halfway back into the book but I picked it up from there and started reading .

This way I'm living things I'm doing . I started listening to sermons all the time and and at one point Alyssa my wife , her dad , was our pastor at that point and I remember one Sabbath for one of his messages he challenged us just for like a week or yeah , this is like one week to do like a media fast . I was like I can do a week , sure .

So I tried that and I just honestly I found like at the end of that week , like my perspective was so much different . My heart felt different . I was like , wow , this , this was good . I actually like was surprised to realize I was kind of sad to go back a little bit and so I was like , well , maybe I should turn this into two weeks .

So I did one more week and at the end of that week I was like I'm never going back and and that kind of sent me a little bit hardcore into like shunning , you know , all movies , all secular music , all games , like purging all of this stuff out of my life and that was , that was probably the most self righteous season of my spiritual walk right there ,

because immediately you start like the comparison and the comparison It'll steal your joy and we so comparing with you are comparing yourself versus other people who are still looking at media . I was comparing myself to pastors that you know might be on audio verse or on Coming to G Y C's or something that , and you know , god bless them .

I don't know that I'm not saying this was their fault at all , it's just the way that I'm hearing , or responding to it , maybe , but I'm like , oh , I need to be a man of God , like you know , so and so .

And then also the comparison in the other direction of like I gave up this thing and I'm noticing that other people around me aren't giving up these things . They seem to be having fun with them and because , because I was giving it up , because I thought it was a duty , it wasn't actually coming from a place of like not being attracted , I was still attracted .

And so there , I wouldn't have admitted it or probably been able to articulate it at the time , but there was like an internal bitterness about all of these things that I'm giving up and people around me get to still enjoy them and still call themselves a Christian and still , like you know , act like they're following God .

That sounds heavy and yeah , no , it was not a , it was not a good way to live , but I was . I was getting , you know to be known as a spiritual person , more and more , to the point that Our conference , our Minnesota conference , approached me and asked if I would start lay pastoring a small church and I was like , oh yeah , of course , like I was .

I was so down with that at that point because I was like this is the natural progression For me . Now , like what else ?

It's like a 15,000 Litchfield even smaller town , about a half hour away , and all of all of the Adventists , like stuff , all the buzz , all of the community hangs out . We got the grade school and we got the high school . We've got a big enough church for everybody .

Litchfield was like an outpost of people randomly scattered around the outskirts , people coming in from farms or just like

little towns of five or six houses . I'll just say this that our Alyssa and I coming there brought the average age of the church down drastically . But I was in a mindset .

I was in an old soul mindset where I'm like this is perfect for me Because seeing myself more in common , having more in common with very conservative old Adventists at that point than somebody in my age group . They were very sweet people and we actually treasured like the two years that we were with them .

But in that time God allowed me to get burned out like spiritual burnout . He also allowed me to realize that that wasn't his call for my life and that that would be okay , that you could actually be into God and not be a pastor . I think I had to learn that by being a pastor .

At the end being like okay , god , I still want you , but I don't think this is cut out for me . In God being like good , I'm glad you learned that . Let's move on now .

I had just told the pastor Hutchinson who technically that was his district , and I was kind of under him taking it for him . I ended up telling him like I'm done , though , on this and he was like he was totally it was actually it was still Alyssa's dad , pastor Wayne .

He was totally good with it and didn't ever give me any hard things about it , but I felt weird , letting it go like this was my duty . I was just kind of struggling with that , trying to figure it out a little bit , and I remember at work we had like a white elephant gift exchange and it's probably like around the holidays .

I think I stopped in October 2012 . Anyway , we're at work , we have a white elephant gift exchange and I'm realizing that I forgot to grab a white elephant gift .

So I run off to like a dollar store to try to find something to bring and while I'm in there I'm like listening to a random chapter of Desire of Ages , which is a book about Jesus' life by Lady Nindel and White , and I think I selected the chapter at random .

But I'm in this like cheapy little dollar store walking around looking for like the dumbest good gift that I could get for a few dollars .

And listening to a story of like Jesus sending out all the disciples and then them ministering for a while and then coming back together and his message to them was come and rest a while , and that was the name of the chapter , and the whole chapter was about him , like having them come and rest with him .

I was so burned out at that point that the guilt of letting this thing go , any of that that I was wrestling with which I don't think I was like that wasn't my only perspective , but it was a wrestling and trying to figure it out , trying to process it , and the guilt that was there for not seeing this thing through or for quitting .

God just ministered to me through that thing While I'm in this dollar

store . I almost started crying as I was like it was like God's saying it's okay . Like it's okay that you're burned out and it's okay that you're stopping and it's okay that you're not gonna be a pastor . Like , just rest . Like it's almost making me cry right now , but just rest in me .

Which , as we get into talking about the good gospel , like that's what this is all about and I didn't understand it all fully then and probably will still keep understanding more but that's really what it's all about is like just learning to receive his goodness and receive , like , the fullness of everything he's done for us and receive the finished work and just

rest , like just rest in him and rest in it .

Like when I read the great controversy I think there was a sense of whoa , there's a whole bunch of stuff here like nobody's ever told me Honestly not to call out any school or person that was my teacher or anything like that , for whatever reason , like the things that Adventists believe about end time prophecy , things like that had actually never really been .

I'd never really been exposed to them . For , being the fifth generation Adventists that I was , I think my mom and dad grew up in a time where they were so burned by it . That's kind of why they went the other direction . They tried to protect me from it . We did have at one point .

This was when , before we moved to Minnesota , I was living in Rapid City , south Dakota , for a few years and we had some lady come into our school . I never saw her before or after . She wasn't associated with the squad . Honestly , I have no clue how she came to be our speaker .

This was probably in the early mid-90s , like maybe 94 or something like that , and she gave us this whole whiteboard presentation breakdown of how and why Jesus is coming in the year 2000 , and that there's gonna be all this persecution that precedes that and we need to be getting ready and I'd never heard anything like this before and I was probably in fifth grade

or something . And so I went home and for the next probably month or two I would just cry myself to sleep like mom , what's coming , what's happening ? And looking back I can tell that she was like oh , what person did they let ? In the grade school I've been trying to protect my son from this kind of like .

That would have been her mentality and she'd sit at my bed and be like I know people used to tell me that when I was a kid too , and I would cry myself to sleep like , which goes to show what her context was growing up and that she was trying to protect me from that .

Anyway , when I read the Great Controversy , there was like such a shock of like how could I have grown up in this thing my whole life and have all of these things that nobody's ever told me ? And so I think that's what kind of spun me off into that self-righteous thing .

A little bit is like me trying to go figure it out on my own , like I'd grown up actually in a pretty grace-based environment and all of a sudden , like looking at everybody like they're in Laodicea because I was in Laodicea I'm using that as a code word , as something that comes out of the book of Revelation for Jesus , describing a church that just doesn't

know their need and they're really complacent in thinking that they're good when they actually don't have a relationship with Him and they're actually in danger , as he says , of getting spit out of His mouth because it's just coming to the end of everything and you can't . He's like the fence is on fire .

Everybody's gotta jump off one side or the other and you guys are like you're not jumping off on my side , and then you do too . I want you to like that's why he's pleading with them .

But so I recognize that in myself as a rather great country person and I think I started seeing everybody else through that lens and I think that is probably what initiated that kind of self-righteous , a little bit more judgmental view of the world . But it's not what I grew up with .

So I think it kind of worked its way out in those couple years and kind of on track as I was starting .

Okay , after I was done pastoring Lichfield , I stopped attending Lichfield and I got into just teaching Sabbath school there and I remember , for whatever reason , like I don't think I had fully understood our church's history something happened in 1888 , actually happened , not . It's like down the road from where I live .

Minneapolis yeah , in 1888 , it was like God took a couple brothers and tried to open up a picture gospel to the Adventist church and they would have none of it at that time . Sad , but you go back and read those two messages EJ Jones , ej Wagner and like , read some of their book . It's Good Gospel . Like this is Righteousness by God .

And I was just kind of starting to learn about some of that stuff and starting to realize like , oh , this righteousness by faith thing , like that's where it's at . But I didn't know what it was .

And so I do remember having like a Sabbath school that I taught on righteousness by faith , and I just remember coming to the end of that Sabbath school and the conclusion of it being like , guys , I think there's something to it here that we still aren't getting Like , and it was like it was honest , like I was like I don't think I'd get it .

I feel like there's just something more to it , and people were probably looking at me like , okay , whatever , dude , what do you think it is ? I'm like I don't know .

I was just getting a sense that it was important and I didn't know why , but anyways , I probably that might have been 2013 or 14 , and within probably around a year of that time I was listening to a guy named Dennis Smith who's a pastor from out east and he's got some good gospel in his message but it's oftentimes communicated through the terminology of like

the baptism of the Holy Spirit , and I was listening to his messages and I was finding like food , spiritual food , in those . But I was listening to this one that I had already played before . I was listening to it again maybe a month or two later and I told you in Natalie about this at one point .

But I just dropped somebody off at the airport and I was driving back home in the dark and just listening to the sermon and all of a sudden , the way that he spoke about 1 John 3,2 , which , if I can remember it , says beloved .

All of a sudden , he starts talking about this verse and breaking it down of like and it was righteousness by faith the way he was doing it , but it was , guys when Jesus comes in the clouds , like we're gonna be able to exist in his presence because his glory is going to be fully manifested in us , and so it's gonna be 100% like his glory coming in the

clouds , meeting his glory like manifested in us . Come together and be beautiful . And the way that he said it just all of a sudden shook my theology , which up into that point probably even through pastoring and everything , but especially

like for sure I know this looking back at high school and growing up , my theology was essentially you're saved by grace , through faith , but you're not actually like gonna be like Jesus down here . That happens when you get upstairs Like you just do as good as you can and God will make up the rest . Just do what you can and God will finish it out .

And when he said like when he essentially said which John says this too you know a little while later that as Jesus is , so are we in the world so are we ? I like that verse . Yeah , man , you got some sweet shirts , some sweet merch .

Like it's crazy how these verses just jump out at you and like , similar to the great controversy , or similar to like , you're just yo . Why didn't anybody tell me that just as he is , so are we . Why didn't anybody ? You get kind of mad .

Anyway , as Dennis Smith is describing this thing , all of a sudden I realized like if I need to be like Jesus when Jesus comes , if it's not something that happens when I get upstairs , like it's supposed to happen downstairs , my theology is not gonna get me there . Like that's what hit me .

All of a sudden , my theology just kind of broke apart , like that's never been on my radar as something that's possible . And so I did , I think , realize at that moment like okay , I need to fully surrender and fully let Jesus make this happen . But there was still a piece missing in that too .

And I don't know , as we get further in the story , that actually only comes in maybe more recently . But if I was to interject it back at this part of the story , the thing that I think was missing was resting , resting in righteousness , by faith . For me back then , trying to figure that out and process it , like how do you then engage as a Christian ?

Like okay , so realizing that it all has to be him in me , but then trying to process that and figure out , how does that not leave me sitting like in a lazy boy ? Like just be like okay , god , you take care of it , I'm just gonna chill here . And how does that , how do I engage in spirituality if I'm also letting it all go and letting him do it all ?

How do I not be laid back and placent like I think it was challenging for me to process that I do write , just my faith was important . I knew that it has to all be him now because of listening to Dennis Smith's message . But for many years , up until even recently , struggling with like okay , how do I let him do it all and be engaged in this thing ?

Have you seen the movie forgetting Sarah Marshall . No .

Remember , don't do anything , nothing , pop up . Well , you know you gotta do more than that , cause you're just laying right at , looks like you're boogie boarding . Just do it , feel it pop up . Yeah , that wasn't quite it , but we're gonna figure it out out there . Let's go surfing . Come on , everybody's learning how . Come on , the weather outside is weather .

And so he gets down on his stomach again and he hops up and it looks like he's doing it slower , but in a way he's trying not to . And Paul Rudd's like , yeah , that's closer , but still less , it's less than that .

And then , finally , he's lying face down and he's not popping up at all , and Paul Rudd's character is like , well , it's gotta be more than that . And that just reminds me Perfect . It's just like you're trying to figure it out . You're like do less , surrender , do less .

And then you do nothing , and so I was like well , I mean , it's gotta be a little bit more than that , yes , that , oh , so it's a perfect , it's a perfect object lesson .

I had a loving picture of God . Anywhere I could go to speak or anything , my message was always in those years , focused on righteousness by faith , focused on even though I didn't fully understand how you run the surfboard , but it was focused on wanting people to know that God loves them , trying to get them focused on the love of Jesus .

So all of that's been in my picture . And so last year 2020 , at the beginning of the year , I got LASIK . Actually , it was in May , it was supposed to be in March , the last day of them taking people .

Like I had this scheduled for months in advance and then , like the day before it happened , they called me and they're like , yeah , sorry , we're shutting down tomorrow . So that got delayed a couple months , but so my vision got clearer in 2020 .

And it was interesting because God used that as kind of an object lesson and a reminder of , like , something that happens spiritually also . Do you wear contacts ? No , oh , you're just good Like you just see everything .

We don't talk about sports , we might talk about movies , like a little bit , but then it's just like we would get into some serious stuff . And while I was in Hutch that , I mean , that's what our conversations were about .

And most of the time , if we had any kind of time off , we'd be at your house pretty much all Sabbath and we would , I mean , there'd be plenty of conversations and I just remember you just had a different kind of hunger and different kind of thirst for spiritual stuff and it was just a , it was a .

It was always a huge blessing to me , cause even if we disagreed which we rarely did when I was living there it was

always just a good conversation .

That's just where our common ground was , in the deep stuff .

No , but this is what this is about . Yeah . It's going to come in a little bit , because go ahead .

I remember you like and I don't think I don't know at that point if it had totally sunk in for you and that's how you were just trying to like ease into this conversation , or if you weren't sure at that point either . I kind of feel like it was maybe the latter , do you remember ? Like you were still in a mode of figuring it out .

Yeah , okay , so for us it's weird to talk to you about it , because and this is why a lot of people have a tough time talking about the gospel Is there's this weird elephant in the room , maybe not an elephant , but just called .

It's called spiritual authority , and there are people that have spiritual authority , and so if they have more spiritual and I don't know if this is a real thing , but I know it's a thing that we think about If someone has more spiritual authority , it's very difficult for you to teach them something or talk to them about something , and if they disagree with you ,

well , they have more spiritual authority than you do . So you should listen to what they're saying . And in our friendship , you had put the time in . You'd been a lay pastor . You'd , if someone was , they were gonna ask somebody to preach a sermon If you were available . They're not picking me , and this wasn't like a comparison game . This is just .

It is what it is . Johnny knows this stuff , johnny knows all of this stuff , and so when I was starting to understand some of this stuff , I'm like I wonder if this is what Johnny has known all along and we just haven't had this conversation yet .

That's what I would think about it , and so it would be difficult for me to talk to you about it in some ways , because I didn't want to .

Like I thought , well , he's got spiritual authority , like he has always understood this stuff , and I'm just the kind of like you were talking about earlier , the guy who's been in Adventist for a while , who has family half of my family has been Adventist for a long , long time . But it wasn't like I was salt and light in I don't know .

It's kind of tough to say , because I was in mentorship roles in my positions for my job and stuff and I believed what I was preaching . But so that's what I was starting to talk to you about , some of these things .

There was the pink sparkly bubble , so we were not privy to everything that was going on behind the scenes , but we sensed tension , we sensed weirdness . We knew at one point that things were bad , that they weren't talking stuff like that . And then all of a sudden you start saying like Tyler's on fire .

And then all of a sudden we see like their marriage just transformed like wildfire and so we're like whoa , something's going on there for sure . So we started listening , like we were open both Alyssa and I were open to kind of hear and see what was going on .

But there was a thing inside me still based this is still based on insecurity , still based on comparing .

There was a thing inside me that , even though I knew that this wasn't okay , or like I knew it wasn't okay to have pride , and sometimes I'd sense it and be like , oh , that's not something I should have and blah , blah , blah , there was a certain kind of feeling of like being the teacher of Israel Like a Nicodemus complex , a little bit Like if I'm going to

learn something from somebody , so what you're describing is probably true . On the other side too , for me , like , if I'm going to learn something , then I need to , like meet with Jesus in a dark , clandestine environment so nobody else sees that I'm learning something . Except I knew all of those things were not okay .

I knew that spiritual pride was not okay , but I still had it and I didn't have any tools to overcome it other than to try to suppress it . And so part of what's happened in this last year was getting the tools , and I kind of mentioned that I have faith strengthening this year . So one thing that I've learned .

Okay , so I'll just kind of jump to where it clicked for me . After we'd been listening to you guys talk for a while , we'd listened to some Love Reality tour messages .

We'd listened to some messages on Romans and like , when it came to Romans seven and like I'd hear Tyler start talking about Romans seven , that was one of those things where it was like a little bit of spiritual pride , like okay , I've been here for years , like I got Romans seven . And for those who are listening and like what are you talking about ?

Romans seven is one of the passages that's tripped up . You know me and so many people around me growing up in the church , where Paul talks about like doing the things he doesn't want to do , and taking that passage and assigning it to us as Christians and being yep , that's me , brother , like I just catch myself doing these things that I don't want to do .

But we take comfort from Romans seven in the sense , in the way that you take comfort from misery loves company . At least Paul was in this boat with me , you know . So the way I kind of saw it was . I started to see Romans seven was not saying that . Paul was not saying I'm a slave to doing things I don't want to do .

He's actually describing the experience of the flesh . And if you look in chapter seven , verse 14 , especially if you're looking in the NASB Bible , like it consistently translates the word flesh and he says , okay , I'm in the flesh . He's basically saying imagine I'm in the flesh , sold into bondage to sin , doing these things I don't want to do .

And then he gets into chapter eight and he's like but you are not in the flesh , you're in the spirit and nobody can dwell in the flesh and dwell with God , and like if you're in the flesh you can't please God and anybody who's in the flesh . He even says like 13 , 14 , one of those verses anybody who's in the flesh will die .

So like it's really clear when he gets into the next chapter , like he's not advocating that he is in the flesh . But in chapter seven he's like okay , let's say I'm in the flesh , being a slave to sin , doing these things I don't want to do .

So I had started to think about that in terms of like say , you are a prisoner in a dungeon , a dark , dank , drippy dungeon . You're all by yourself , alone in this kind of cave , like environment , and it's like despair .

And all of a sudden you see something like kind of wiggling , like a little bit of dust and crumbles falling from the wall and you see something like pushing away like little little crumbles of the wall and like what is that ?

And go over there and like see as it , as the dirt falls away , like a little note poking through , like being shoved through , and you grab the note and you open it up and it says hey , I know it's terrible in here , but I'm on the other side of this wall , I'm here

with you , man , and you take some comfort from that , to like all of a sudden realize that you're not alone . You're in this dungeon with somebody else and you're sharing the experience with another person and you take comfort from it .

And that's the kind of comfort that we've taken from Romans seven , when actually what Paul's doing like , okay , paint yourself in that situation again , the dirt is crumbling off the wall , the note's poking through and you pull it out and it says , hey , I know you're in this dungeon and I want you to know , I found a way out .

And that's what Romans six , seven and eight is all about . And we've been focusing on Romans seven like taking comfort , as if Paul's saying I'm in here with you , man . There's no hope , but at least we're together .

How long before you understanding Roman seven was this ? Was this beginning your ? I'm uncomfortable with this pride that I'm feeling phase .

So it coming in and me identifying with it , like yeah , this is who I am , that sucks . I need to like be in the struggling battle my whole life to kind of like struggle against this pride . I knew Roman seven better than I knew new Roman six , as it turns out , because , as we were hearing , you know more and more from other chapters too and other books .

But for a lot of people it started in Roman six , and so I was . I think this was March of last year . It was like COVID hit and maybe it was into April . No , it was in April . Covid hit and we all got sent home from our churches , right .

So Alyssa and I started tuning in to like love reality tour messages on Zoom chats and stuff like that in the Sabbath schools that are being run by Tyler whoever I'm wrestling with the spiritual tribe .

But I'm also trying to listen and trying to see if there's anything here that I'm missing , cause there's like a sense like I think I'm missing something Like the way that they're talking about freedom . I don't know if I'm like that comfortable talking about freedom , and so I'm listening and a lot of it's going to Roman six . I spend like one morning after .

Listening to some of these messages is probably like we listened on Saturday and Sunday morning . I'm in bed and just reading Roman six and all of a sudden , like as my eyes went across the words , the spirit spoke to me in a way that I'd never read the words before .

When , in verse six , when he just says you were crucified with Christ and you are dead to sin , and like the way that it jumped off the page at me in that moment was a realization that every time I've ever read that in the past it was always like , okay , paul is writing that to these Romans .

He apparently has some confidence in their spiritual walk and that they're doing pretty good and so he's comfortable saying okay , you guys have died to sin . But I don't know if I can apply that to my life . Sometimes I can , sometimes I can't , because it's based on performance .

Even in my grace based picture it's coupled with this performance and sometimes I don't feel like I can say that . Maybe sometimes in myself , righteous moments , I feel like I can , but it was not a confident thing ever that I could say that I've died to sin .

And as I read it that morning , all of a sudden it jumped off the page like it has nothing to do with you . You died to sin before you were ever born . You had no say in it . It had nothing to do with you . Jesus just scooped up your life and brought it with him as he went to the cross .

And that is done and you can't change it and you are dead to sin , whether you like it or not . Like your life already went and died with him . And yeah , my sinful life needed to be judged by the law and I was expecting to be covered by God's grace and all that stuff .

But it just hit me even more strongly in that moment , like your life already was judged by the law . Like when in John 12 , 31 , jesus says now is the judgment of this world and now the rule of this world's being kicked out and if I'm lifted up I'm gonna draw a man to me .

So in the context of the cross , he says right now the whole world is about to be judged . Like pile them on , I'm gonna take every single one of them and we're gonna all go get judged before the law and we're not gonna pass the test and we're all gonna go in the grave together and then we're all going to rise together .

And it just struck me in that moment like , whether I like it or not , however I perform , no matter what I put forward , like my life has already been judged by the law in Christ and I've already died with Him . I already went into a grave with Him in some mystical way . You know , john Crowder calls it this mystical union .

We're united with Christ and Christ was given to the human family as a gift to become one with us in some mysterious way . Like he just took us into Himself and now all of our life is through Him . And there's a human that's sitting on the throne of the universe . Like there's going to be a human that is God , like ruling the universe .

He's bringing all of this with Him , but for the rest of eternity , and God is going to get a U-Haul and move from heaven to earth and bring His kingdom . Like to reside here , like we are the rebels and His love is so strong and so great and redemption is much more than what was lost in the first place .

Like the beauty of His grace is that he's bringing .

He brought us into His kingdom and he's bringing His kingdom here to us , like it's just , it's incredible , but all of this , like it just popped out of the verse that morning that it's just done and there's nothing more that I can do to add or take away from it , and all I can do is receive it , which sounds really passive , right , and we were kind of

talking about that question earlier on like where do you stand on the surfboard ? Oh , that's a great analogy .

Anything I would ever read like that in scripture , I would read through the eye of flesh and I would consult with my feelings and I would consult with my performance to figure out if I believe that this is true . I wouldn't have articulated it that way , I probably wouldn't have realized that that's what's going on .

But that's why Romans 6 never jumped out to me before . If I was gonna read , I'd to sin . I couldn't fully receive that and believe that . Because I'm checking my feelings and I'm checking my performance and I'm not passing the test . And so I'm like meh , not so sure about that one right now , but with the eye of faith , like okay .

So the things that we can catch with our five senses will paint this fog in front of our vision of you . Know , you're not good enough , or you've messed this up , or you don't feel it . It's like you can't see far . And so there's this haze in front of you , this fog .

What the eye of faith does is doesn't bother consulting with your feelings , it doesn't bother consulting with your performance . It just reaches through the fog and starts grabbing onto things that God's word says and just pulls them back and accepts them as a higher truth and what you can feel or see .

So that has transformed how I would deal with a thought of spiritual pride that comes into my heart now or like a thought of comparison , whereas before I identified with like well , that must be me and this is my struggle through all life . Now I don't .

The thought might come in , but like Martin Luther says , like you can't stop the birds from flying overhead , but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair . Like I'll have the thought . I still have thoughts that come from Adam one . I still have thoughts that come from the flesh . They pop into my head .

I still have feelings that come from Adam one , but I don't ever accept them as the highest reality anymore . Like the eye of faith can see right through them . It's like X-ray vision sees right through it and it's like this isn't the highest thing that's true .

Like there can't be actually anything that's more true about me than what my designer creator says is true .

Like he knows what's the truest thing about me and if he designed me to be in his image and he's redeemed me to be in his image and he's already finished the work that it takes to make that real , the eye of faith can reach through all that fog and be like I'm gonna grasp onto what he says about me and that's the highest reality of what I am , because

he's my designer , creator , and so that's what 2020 gave me and that's what love reality tour and conversations with you . You know , at one point I was like struggling with am I getting this ? Am I not getting this ?

And one of the things you said in one of our conversations that helped like push it into my thick skull was you're like you got this , you already got this , and I was like , oh , okay , yeah , cause I mean everybody's got it , like the only thing you have to do is just receive it . I think I- .

spiritually prideful right now and that contradicts me understanding this . Yes , how can I understand this if I'm feeling like this and I'm just like , no , that's not you , you're not spiritually pride proud , you don't . That's the enemy . You get this Because I couldn't understand why you weren't just like jiving with what we were saying .

I was like bro , you've known all of this and you're like I do . I know that I'm like , then what's stopping you ? And I think there was this thing that I find . I find that people cannot say that they are the righteousness of God in Christ . And so I'll straight up ask are you the righteousness of God in Christ ?

Because Second Corinthians 521 says that he became sin who knew no sin , so that you might become the righteousness of God in Christ ? Is that true for you ?

So we're like I don't have confidence that I've got it right now . Yeah . I don't have that assurance , but so what did you ?

So I was listening , honestly , as you guys were talking about it , but I don't know if you I don't know how you perceived me at some point If I was like you maybe . I don't know if you maybe felt like just like pushing back or just being ordinary about receiving that .

I don't think that that was my mindset , but it and maybe that wasn't how you're perceiving me either , but maybe I'll let you speak to that . I don't know what what did you feel like when you were trying to communicate ?

And so , when this new thought that you shouldn't identify as something that he destroyed at the cross and you died with him , and that now you're risen of newness of life , you shouldn't identify with the thing that he destroyed , I was uncomfortable with that . Because of what ? My situation , my circumstances , my performance , my behavior .

My behavior hadn't shown that he had destroyed it . Yeah . How can that be true ? Yeah , and so I saw you being uncomfortable the same way . I was uncomfortable , but when I was uncomfortable , no one was watching me . No one was saying do you get this , do you understand it ?

It was just Tyler and I hanging out talking me , watching videos online , and so it was . I felt like , oh , this is a different experience than my experience , because the only person kind of talking with me about it was Tyler . And now , so I was like I know exactly why you're uncomfortable , but don't be uncomfortable Like it's actually better , it's good news .

And since when , since then , have had time to do that and I'm like , oh , this is so scriptural . Like I can't find , I can hardly find anything that the Bible says about . I can't find anything that the Bible says about sinners that would make me identify with it .

Actually , what the Bible says about sinners is like they're going to be destroyed from the earth . Sinners will not inherit the kingdom Like sinners . Sinners are always the opposite camp of God's people . They're always like , positioned opposite of the righteous .

Like sinners will not dwell in the flames of God this is like , I think , isaiah 33 , 14 area but like the righteous will dwell in in like the fiery presence of God . I don't know why , I'd never seen it before but sinners like .

At one point we were listening to Jonathan Leonardo talk through one of the LRT pod or the LRT , and when he took it back to Romans five . That's where it kind of started to sink in for me and he quoted Psalms , chapter one that juxtaposes the sinner from the righteous , and I'm like , okay , there's some scripture behind this .

I hadn't like searched it out for myself but I was like , okay , he grounded that . But when he went to Romans five it didn't all sink in that first night but he exposed me to it so I could go check it out and and realize that this checks out that Romans , teaching us that we became sinners irregardless of what people did .

They became sinners based on what Adam did . They were born into being a sinner based on what Adam did . According to scripture , this category of sinner is what , what they inherited and the only way yeah to get out of it would be to be born into a different genealogy .

And so the same way that everybody was categorized as sinners through Adam , regardless , because it says , right there , you know , yes , there was people breaking the law , but actually the law is not imputed when there is not a law given , like the law wasn't actually even judging anybody for a long time , nobody even had the law and their sin actually wasn't being

imputed against them . Nevertheless , their deeds were leading to death and they were categorized as sinners because they were born into Adam .

But then I think it's in 18 , versus 18 and 19 , it just like gets down to brass tacks and starts talking about you are a sinner because you were born into Adam , but now you've actually become righteous because you're born into God , you're born into Christ and what he's done for you .

And I was like , okay , like this all checks out , this is very scriptural and that was totally a thing for me , like identifying a sinner my whole life and that that was leading to you know , not having the tools to overcome these things , these thoughts that come to my mind and stuff like that , because in my mind , like that's who I am .

And now , when those thoughts come in , I'm like , okay , like that's not who God's created me to be . I'm created in his image .

The fact that this random like Adam , one man of the flesh , is trying to resurrect himself right now , like that , dude , you were putting the grave in Christ , like you might be trying something right now , but I don't have to listen to you , like I can put that away , realizing that that's not my core identity .

My core identity comes from my creator , designer , and what he says , that I am .

And then he's describing how , now that Jesus has come , even now Gentiles can be grafted into this covenant . Now they can if they believe that there was a Jewish man who was also God and died , and you died with him . If you believe in Jesus , you are now grafted into this to his people .

And now you're in covenant with him , so you're no longer a sinner Gentile , you're a righteous son based on your belief . Why ? Because Romans four . Because Adam or not Adam , abraham believed and he was righteous , and so it's all coming back to his righteousness by faith . If you believe , what did Abraham believe ?

Abraham believed that God was going to make his descendants as much of the stars and that he was going to send somebody through his line that was going to save the whole world . Abraham believed that he didn't even see it , so he's counted as righteous . We believe because we believe differently than the first Christians that were coming along in Galatia and Ephesus .

And why ? Because Paul is saying that guy from 40 years ago , he was actually God , and they didn't have any book that was written to talk about this . They just had Paul saying that this is true and explaining the whole thing . We have it all written down right .

There are eyewitnesses that saw Jesus die , and so we just believe that and we're grafted to his covenant , abraham was actually believing in something he hadn't seen yet , but he was essentially believing in God .

The old covenant really came in to show us our need of the new covenant and that's why 1st Timothy 1.9 , which you know . That verse says the law was not made for the righteous . It was made for sinners , to help them to realize their need for something else .

And once they come to Christ and this might be in Galatians 3 , but once they come to Christ the law has done its job in bringing them to the one that they needed , which was him , the old covenant .

Essentially , those two things for me have been pretty pivotal and I'll just tie something in that I think I kind of left a loose thread on a little while back , which was , you know , my picture of righteousness by faith . That was like how passive is this thing ? Where do I stand on the surfboard ?

I love that you said that so we can have that as a reference point Versus now , like what is active righteousness by faith versus passive righteousness by faith . And what's active now is this eye of faith that I'm talking about , where sometimes my feelings do come in and they're trying to convince me of a thing .

Sometimes my performance is trying to convince me that I am a sinner or I'm such and such , and it takes an active stretching through that fog to reach out and to grab onto what God has said .

And so I'm not struggling anymore in the sense that I used to thinking that I'm struggling against the flesh , like the flesh is dead and done , but I am actively stretching at times to exercise this eye of faith , when the eye of flesh is trying to speak louder , and so that you put that down and you're like , no , that's not what's true , and you have to

kind of actively like grab onto these promises and pull them in and receive them . Does that ?

Now you look at it in a different way and you're like , no , I'm a slave to righteousness , so why did I do that thing ? And then we just talked to our father and we said I know , you didn't create me for this . And the thing about sin is that it's a bad word . It will make you believe less , it will put you in a cloud . You'll run

off and put fig leaves on and hide out . You shouldn't , but you do because it's awful , it's just how it works . It's a lie . It doesn't even exist , but it has a lie and so it has you doing those things . So you have to claim the truth about it . You have to understand what it is . And then you're like , oh , that monk doesn't have any power over me .

Praise the Lord .

I've been spending more time on Netflix . These things used to position me in my mind as further away from God , and now there's a struggle to return . I know that I'm slipping and I know that I'm going the wrong direction .

At one of these days I'm going to have to turn it around , and I've been sliding down the mountain , I'm going to have to climb back up a little bit , and I didn't see that as a salvation thing or an assurance-shaking thing , but just kind of a discouraging thing , like , oh , I got to get my habits back , to get my relationship with God kind of back in good

graces . Now just realizing , like Colossians saying , you've been brought near to him by the blood of Christ and there's no nearer that you could be brought by any of your efforts , by your devotional life , by your Netflix life .

You can't push or pull yourself any further than where you are , because you're in Christ , your life was scooped up into him and merged with him and he's sitting alongside God on the throne and you're either in that , by receiving it and believing it , or you're not .

So if you're in it all , you're right next to him , like in the throne , brought totally near , and so that's powerful , because there's no level to it , right , there's no levels . Yes , there's no spectrum and I've slipped down the spectrum . Now I need to crawl my way back onto the other side of the spectrum .

Now , okay , yeah , some weeks I'm like , oh , these habits got a little bit like shifted , different than what I would prefer , and oh , at the moment you know what I don't actually feel as close to God . But the eye of faith reaches through that fog and says that has no bearing on what's real .

Like you are right there , you are right next to him , seated on the throne with him , and just having that perspective means there's no like arduous crawl back . It's like I'm back , I'm never left , like it was just my perspective got off a little bit for a little while , but I never stopped believing this thing . So I'm still in him .

And as soon as you wake up and your eyes clear up a little bit , like that's the only time it takes to be right back in close proximity and like to be near God . And that's powerful , like just to get rid of that discouragement .

Because when you're , when you see yourself down the hill , like you've slid down the hill and you have to go back and you're losing motivation by your habits , sometimes you're losing motivation to go back and now it's like , oh , and I don't even feel like climbing back up and it's easier to slip down , and you feel yourself stuck in this struggle of , oh , it's

going to be so hard to start climbing upwards again , like all of that's just gone now and it's just like .

there's just a piece even if my performance hasn't worked out perfectly over the last week there's just a piece like instantly knowing I'm not crawling back , I'm transported back , like being me up Scotty , and I never even left , like because I never stopped believing this thing . It got my eye , just got off a little bit .

If you slip up , you're slipping up in God's grace , you're covered , you're loved , you're a son , you're near Him . If you're performing great , then you realize you're made in His image and it's His Spirit that's living inside you and you're excited about it .

There's no pressure and that takes away this comparison that steals our joy and looking at other's spiritual life and being like why am I not Listen to these podcasts ? Everybody's story is so different it doesn't need to look like anybody's story . When you understand who you are in Christ , none of it matters anyway .

Nobody can take away your relationship with God as a personal , intimate thing between you and Him . It's special , it's unique between you and Him . There's nothing to compare to . Anyway . You are fully supplied , you're fully complete in Him . It's the finished work .

But I know that you're different and it's like you and Lauren have always been walking with the Spirit , but now you're lighter .

But it's transformed the way that I look at sex because at one point , contemplating , I'd say , in our marriage we've had , as the world would think , like a relatively , I think , healthy sex life .

But it's pretty stereotypical in the sense Alyssa's going to love that I'm talking about this but it's pretty stereotypical in the sense that our libidos are not aligned , if you know what I'm talking about . I have no idea .

We're not on the same page and so I always would kind of question God like God , why did you make us that way , so offset from each other in that regard ?

And one of the things like and I think it's come through this perspective , but it was just a thing that God put in my heart recently is like look at Jesus and his bride , look at Jesus in the church and the offset of their libido for intimacy and how . That's never stopped Jesus from just serving , loving and pursuing intimacy .

And it's not to say that this is not to position Alyssa in any way . It's just to say I was looking at a sexual life through this selfish lens of what can I get out of this ? And even like struggling , like knowing that that wasn't right also , but not having any tools with it again is like I would sometimes be praying to God .

What does sex look like from your design ? How could we be having sex in a way that I would be happy for you to be in the room ? It was hard to figure out .

And through this God's just like , through understanding that I'm made in his image , understanding that I'm just made to serve , like I'm just made to serve my wife , and that goes in all of these categories of life . But it goes into the bedroom too . That's what that is about .

You can go in there if you're really believing , like God's spirit is living inside you . Other thoughts , other feelings might

come . You just push them away and realize that they're this dead guy that's trying to come back to life . But to realize if you were made in God's image , you were made to serve and that goes right into sexual life as well Like you're not there for yourself in any way .

You're actually there to show value to the other person , to show them their value to you and just to you . Know what I'm saying just to serve that person . That's been awesome . It's been new and it's been a shift in a mindset and it's like made it all make sense .

Like the offset libido thing is like , oh , this is like putting me in the perfect place , like it's in the same place that Christ would be and like I get to be like the Christ to my household , like it's an awesome privilege to be able to I don't know be in that position and just serving generally in life .

Behold , the new has come . And now we're believing that and our lives are being changed . Yeah if you're listening to this right now and you're questioning .

That's what you have to reach through with the eye of faith , or with the arm of faith , or whatever you want to call it Like reach through and grab on to what God's word is saying about you , rather than those feelings , because those are what will trip you up and it takes some time and exercising it to realize , like you don't have to succumb to those

feelings . That's not what I didn't . Just because you're feeling that doesn't mean you're not getting it , doesn't mean you're not it . You are it and you can push those feelings aside and just believe it . Mercy , well , I know we could talk for ?

And thanks for coming on , man . This has been a huge blessing to me .