This will be the greatest challenge of your life

and in fact they make the questions specific to Bernie. Yeah, so many times. And that's what this podcast is. We answer your questions. If you have anything, email Grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com. We'll put it in the queue. We'll get to it, and it could be about any subject.

I feel the weight of your questions. I realized that this podcast has become something where you want to bounce an idea off of us, and we're going to talk through it with no notes, no preparation, and we're gonna speak to you as though we're just three friends hanging out trying to give some advice in real time, walking through it slowly in long form, which is why I love podcast. Thank you for all the different platforms you're listening on, whether it's Spotify or Apple Music or YouTube

or whatever your favorite podcast style platform is. Thank you. You guys have made this one of the top podcasts in all the music genre and love you for that. And we're so grateful for this platform. And Bernie, you've been coming for probably over a year now as a guest. Yeah, which is awesome. I thought for sure I was gonna bomb this thing the first time I came. I was like, well, Granger's not gonna do the podcast anymore. They're gonna cancel it after I was on. But or you guys were

going to cancel me. But you've been so gracious and like Grangers, just give me a bunch of feedback from you know, meet and greets and whatnot. And so I'll keep coming as long as you keep in bite me man, absolutely. And can I say real quick, your brother Parker on this podcast. He's late twenties, is that right? My goodness?

He is like his perspective, his responses, his wisdom. I don't want to say for being that age, because for any age, but to be in the late twenties and have the perspective that he has is really awesome to listen to. The shout out to Parker listening, buddy, We'll get We'll get Parker back on here soon too. Guys, if you have anything, like I said, I'm gonna repeat it that. The email is Grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com. I want to blind. I want to jump into this.

The seventh first one is about being blind, which is an interesting I think it's the first time you've dealt with something like this, but the subject line is the first time. Yeah. The subject line says blind relationship slash Bernie is my fave. Oh stop it. They love you, Bernie, they love you. The question is short and it says this. My name is Alison. I'm twenty four years old. Back

in November twenty twenty, I became blind unexpectedly. My boyfriend of five years says that going blind doesn't change how he feels about me, But how do I curb the nagging feeling that I'm going to hold him back from doing things that two sided people would enjoy? Thank you? I love the podcast. Definitely never heard that one before. Yeah, so that's a new Yeah. So November twenty twenty now so that means that I'm guessing three and a half four years they had a relationship where she could see,

and then she became blind pretty recently. And it's an understandable nagging feeling that she has. It's I want to I want to validate her her feeling that if you lose one of your five senses, you're going to feel lesser of a of a partner in a relationship, absolutely, and that you're going to hold that other person back from experiencing their life to the fullest. Yeah. I think you could probably could probably say the same thing about if you lost your legs or you lost your hearing.

I think anytime you anytime you have something that drastically changes the way you perceive the world, you're going to feel vulnerable. How do we start with Alison. Yeah, so it's a burden that she has to carry, but she's also now her husband is now carrying with her. So seek wise counsel. I think comes to comes to mind

in terms of seeking other relationships that are similar. We're either maybe someone's in a wheelchair and the other person's not, and those kind of relationships that are strong and well grounded would be a good resource for Allison. Absolutely. Yeah, there's probably a community of people that have already found each other and could be a support system for her and her husband that they just didn't know until they kind of entered into this. Yeah. Yeah, I think that

you're going to learn a lot about this boyfriend. Oh, it's a boyfriend. It's a boyfriend. Oh okay, for some reason, I thought it was a husband. I said a husband a couple times. Okay, that probably changes it a little bit. That definitely changes it. That changes my answer, I think a bit. But it doesn't seem like there's any resistance from him. Hey, props to the dude he's telling her. It does not change the way he feels. And it's been it's been well over a year, it's been almost

two years, supposed to this guy. Well, if he is listening to this podcast, and bro, you love this girl enough to stay with her even after she's became blind, you need to marry her already, right, Yeah. Absolutely, But let's look at the benefits for this dude. He doesn't have to comb his hair anymore, that's right. He doesn't have to worry about what he wears as much anymore. Oh yeah, that's kind of nice. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm just thinking about how you know, my clothes are

kind of laid out. It's like okay, yeah, I'm I aware of that. Okay, God, no, go back in and change like okay. Help that happens a lot. Help me out someone that has an impairment like this. Help me out with this, because I've heard. It's my understanding that when you lose since like sight, that other senses are enhanced.

Have you heard that? Yeah, yeah, I've heard that that you you're the human body starts to compensate, and so you get better hearing, or maybe your smell gets better, or maybe your sense of touch obviously would get better because you're going to start feeling more throughout your surroundings,

and so you are your body's going to compensate. I'm speaking a little bit out of terms here because I can't relate to this, but I can relate to you being vulnerable in the situation, and I want to commend you on emailing us and feeling this vulnerability, and I would I would encourage you to kind of lean into that vulnerability with your boyfriend so that he knows that you're not just blindly confident about you're the same person, because you're not the same person anymore, and that's not

a bad thing, but you are different. And I think we all go through seasons or times chapters in our life where things change, Like I have impairment that have happened to me. You do, everyone does. Where something happens in your life and from that that moment on your a different You're a different version of yourself, and that's

what's happened to you. I would I would, I would lean into that vulnerability, and aside from your relationship with your boyfriend, I would really lean into God's word because in the Gospels, the four Gospels that we have of Jesus's life on Earth, blindness comes up a lot. Jesus talks about blindness a lot, and it's never in a negative light. Ever, sometimes it's in a positive light, like I'm going to open your eyes to the Kingdom of Heaven in a new way that you could never see

with your earthly eyes. My eyes are going to go out one day, yours are two. I might die at the same moment or not, but regardless, all of our eyes are going to go out at some point. You might Allison have been given a gift with this blindness that is probably hard to recognize right now, but this might be a gift that you're going to be able to lean into how you perceive the world in a

completely different way, and that could benefit somebody. So I want you to recognize that you are an asset to this boyfriend, or if you don't stay with this guy, you're an asset to someone else in the future. You are bringing a lot to the table as a person, Alison, and I want you to recognize that, yeah, and also recognize that I'm not sure. I feel like we've said before, like a lot of these podcast questions can kind of like be answered with like this handful of different responses.

I feel like this one has a couple of a couple of them in there, But one of them that we haven't mentioned is community for her, specifically for her. Can you imagine the counseling and the support and the you know, community that you would need if one day

you could see and then another day you couldn't. Just apart from the day to day help me, you know, get accustomed to this, just having someone to talk to, whether it's a community of friends or an actual counselor Because I feel like that is a very traumatic event. And so I think, you know, just practically, you know, seek out some counsel and community to like help you process I used to see and now I don't. What does that mean for my life? What does that mean

for my identity? What does that mean for my relationship? And just process that with other people. I mean the same way that you are in some way with us, and that we're encouraging everybody to do, like find your tribe, find your community, and wrestle through these things with each other, support each other through them. So I think that's something practical that she can do. Absolutely that's the best advice I know to be able to give you, Alison. I

want to finish with this last thought for you. There might be a feeling with this boyfriend at any moment, if he starts to turn and not be the guy that you need or deserve, there might be a feeling in you that wants to hold on to him because he's the last relationship that you'll have that you will know what they look like. Like. So strange thought, but possible that you could this guy could become a jerk.

And you justify that by saying, well, I got to stay with him, because if I move on, I won't know what the next guy even looks like, and that's

a big disadvantage. So I want to rebuke that and just say, let's go with character and integrity and these core values honesty that you could get from a boyfriend or relationship that has nothing to do with what they look like, and lean into that comfort that no matter what happens you, you're gonna be Okay, You're gonna this is gonna be, this is gonna be really good for you. Thank you for emailing. This is a it's a serious question, and thank you for opening up for for us on

this podcast with this and sharing it. Oh this is interesting, no particular order. The next one that just popped up says, help angry husband. Let's do it first, first parentheses. Have you ever been an angry husband? Man? I mean a different direction, but I'm gonna I'm not going to claim that I'm perfect in anyway. The first thing that says is anonymous, Please, okay, you got my back one. I'm

not going to mess this up. You've gotten better, man, You've gotten a lot better call him anonymous, refer to him as anonymous. Okay, it says, did they sign their name at the bottom of there's no name at the bottom, and I'm pretty sure that she doesn't say her name anytime, and they've learned. Hey, Granger, I listened to all your podcasts and almost always agree with your advice. I think that's a compliment. You could say it this way, I almost always agree with your advice, instead of I almost

always agree with your advice. I'll say it the former way. So here's the problem. My husband and I have been married for seven years. He was my first boyfriend, my first everything. I love him. I can't imagine my life without him. But dot dot dot he has problems with anger and bad language. I've often tried to talk to him about these issues, but he either brushes it off

or gets angry at me for bringing it up. Sometimes he'll admit that he has a problem and vows to change, but the next day it's forgotten he goes back to his bad habits. He professes to be a Christian parentheses when he's not angry, faithfully attends church and reads the Bible. But then he'll get upset over this all his things and cuss and yell at me. I'm just so tired of this behavior, and I'm starting to regret marrying him when I think of what I'll probably have to go

through over the next, say, forty to fifty years. God has blessed us with ex excuse me, God has not blessed us with a family. And I feel somewhat guilty for saying this, but a part of me is glad that we won't have kids that will be subjected to this. He often apologizes to me, but I'm having a hard time believing him when he says he's sorry. I know I can't change him, and only Jesus in his heart can do that. But do you have any advice on how I could react or how to cope with this?

This is one of these issues where without her with us, we don't know the extent of this anger. We don't know the extent of when she says he yells and cusses at me like that's abuse, And so I want to preface before we say anything that I don't know. I don't know the extent of what you mean by yelling and cussing at you, like, is it just an angry man with a good heart and he falls off the handle and he needs some kind of anger management or is this guy abusing you verbally in a way

that is damaging to your soul? Right, So I want to say that I don't know, Guys, I don't know. Maybe you can address like the lowest form of that and then the greatest form of that. I'm guessing it's probably somewhere in between. But maybe so she can you know, she's not here with us, but you can say like, Okay, hey, if it's kind of here, maybe this would be the advice. But if it's here, this would be the advice. Yeah.

I got a feeling that a lot of people listening are dealing with something like this fallen, broken world, and there's a lot of anger. There's a lot of anxiety right now. There always has been, but we could speak to it right now with the state of the world, the everything that's happening in the world around us creates anger and that gets misguided and sometimes redirects to the spouse because that's the person that's there and takes the brunt,

that takes the heat. And it's a terrible, terrible thing. But I'm trying to explain why I understand how this could happen and how a lot of people are probably in this kind of situation. We should probably address. There's a little bit multi layered. We should probably address that he professes to be a Christian parentheses when he's not angry. I don't really understand that. Yeah, as you were reading it, I almost didn't want to get into addressing him because

I would just kind of fair enough. I would just kind of get I would go off on a tangent because we don't know enough. We don't know enough, and I would be making accusations and assumptions that based on his behavior, would bring me to some conclusions that are just really hard to make. But the it doesn't sound like the fruits of the spirit are evident in his life. I mean, yeah, she said that he does come back and say sorry, But maybe we can get to that

in addressing her. But so her question is how can I react or cope with this? And I hope you know, Anonymous, this is not Whatever the answer is, and whatever you figure out, it's not easy. It's going to be a huge mountain for you to climb. And my heart goes out to you. I'm so sorry that you are. You're going to have to tackle maybe the greatest challenge of your life. Maybe if you're out there and you've been in an abusive relationship of some way, maybe comment your

experience with this person. Maybe there's some like experienceial wisdom out there amongst the nation that Anonymous. I hope you read all the comments, and maybe you can not just from me and Griz, but you can get some inspiration or some guidance from everybody else too, who's actually been in the thick of it. Seven years married, first boyfriend, so it means a lot of years before that first everything. Love him, can't imagine life without him. That's great. That's

a good setup for coping. That's a good setup for it's a good reason for you to do what the Bible says and honor him. That the Bible says to honor your wives, husbands, honor your wives. And so we can't speak to him, but I could speak to you, Anonymous, and just say honoring him back might not change his anger, but will it will put your soul at rest in a lot of other ways if you are if you're engaging in his anger, anger can become almost like like

an addiction. When someone is under the influence of a substance when they become under the influence of their anger, it's almost like they're a different person. And so to engage with that different person, the person that's under the influence, you're never going to win. You're never going to come out and say the right things unless you confidently not not a not a way that you could get hurt

in any way. But if you could confidently honor him instead of engaging with this, this this animal side of him, No, I think that's good. I think too, like communication, you know, if we're talking about the different silos that these things can fall in, Like maybe when he's not when you guys are just on a date night, or you feel like this is a really good moment that we're having, maybe just ask him about work and about maybe his friends,

and like try to find out. I guarantee you this anger is coming out of pressure and anxiety and stress. So if maybe you can start to like understand what is stressing him, what is making him impatient. Maybe you're doing something that's part of it, maybe like without knowing, and you can you know, recognize, or maybe it has nothing to do with that, Maybe it's something at work, but you understanding and telling him, hey, babe, you know, why don't you not worry about that promotion? Like I don't.

We can we can keep the stuff we have, we can actually move, We don't need money to be happy. Take the pressure that I know men can feel sometimes about providing and reputation and all this. Maybe you just help alleviate that. I know that my wife has done such a good job of recognizing when things at work or different areas of life are kind of like there's pressure of just helping to re not to like contribute to that, but to help relieve some of that, and say, hey, hey,

let me let me take care of the kids. Why don't you go on a bike ride, or why don't you, you know, go do something, because yeah, I could definitely sense you need some space and and man, just I don't even need the bike ride. I don't even need to get away. Just her recognizing, yes, I don't know why I'm so overloaded, and her telling me, hey, why don't you take some of those things off your plate. I'm going to be happy with you no matter what.

Maybe that helps his overall level of patience and everything grow because he's not he's not stretched past his margin in life. He has some margins, so it's like something happens and he's not flipping, you know, flying off the handle right away. Yeah. Right, I think you're so right, man. I love that. I love that answer. And there's there's the right way to say that, Bernie, And there's probably

a wrong way to say that. The right way would to be like you said and just go I love you and I want to be able to contribute to some of this stuff that you're you're going with, you're going through. How could I help? How could I be a better wife to you? Instead of the wrong way would be you're angry all the time. Yeah, what's the matter with you? What is the matter? Something at work? Is there? Something I'm doing? Is there? What's going is

that your your dad's bothering him? Just we should just tell me because you're just anger all the time and I can't handle his anger. And here's what you never say. And I'll be honest with you. I don't know if I could do this for thirty or forty fifty more years with you. I just don't know if I could do that. And this is not the man that I'm married. Ooh, that's a good one. Doun't say that don't say that

you're just like throwing gasoline on the fire. There's ways that you could do this in ways that you can't. And just as Bernie spoke about Leslie's wife, there's there's things that Amber does for me that and she could. You've known this guy for over seven years. You could read him. Humans are great at reading each other. So Amber will read me. And I don't know if she's

actively doing this or not. Maybe she'll tell me after she hears this podcast, but she'll she'll read that something's going on on the road, or that we've been we've been going through a tough run of maybe it's county fairs, and there's bickering in the crew that we've been through some production guys that have yelled at my crew, and I'm putting out those fires and I haven't gotten much

sleep because I got in an early flight. And when I come home, Amber will say something like this, she'll say, thank you so much for working so hard for this family,

providing for us. And she'll say that in front of the kids, and she'll she'll say out loud to the kids, guys, aren't you so lucky that your dad works so hard to provide for us and to bring to put food on the table, and that just like it takes all this this anxiety that I've had at work or with friends or whatever's going on, it takes it away and reminds me that, oh, yeah, this is what's worth it. This, this family, this, this tight knit group is what's worth it.

And I wonder, Anonymous, if you started being that kind of wife, not saying you're not now and I have to That's why I preface with this verbal abuse thing at the beginning, because I don't know the extent of it, but maybe if that's who you leaned into, that kind of wife there was always supportive and always honoring and always honest and left the communication open where you became the person that he could trust with the worst things in his life, then I wonder if this starts to

get distinguished, I mean extinguished a little bit through this anger. Yeah, no, that's great. On the far side of that, I think. And you may have hit on this already, like you probably. If there is verbal, physical, continuous abuse, you need to get some help, like separate yourself from it. No one needs to be subjected to that. There needs to be intervention with that if I pray that that's not it.

But if it is, we got no help for you here, Like you're gonna need to get some serious help and intervention. But I think everything Greg you're saying is right on on. I do want to play Devil's advocate for a second. That Anonymous may be part of the problem. We don't know. We don't know, right, So let's just say, Anonymous, you probably need to take an inventory of what you're posture and what you're contributing to the relationship. Are you demanding

of your husband things that he can't fulfill. You're saying, I want you here all the time, but I also want you to work and buy me this stuff. Are you is he caught an attention that you're perpetuating that you're creating. Are you part of the problem. You have to ask yourself that question. We don't know, and we don't you know. I hope I'm not offending you by asking that, but you got to ask yourself that, like

what am I contributing? Is this really? Because a lot of times it's so easy to see what the other person is to It's like, dude, he's doing this, he's angry, he's this but meanwhile you're forgetting that you're being very controlling, manipulative, and it's like, hey, I guarantee you. You You start to, like Granger said, you start to dig into word and look for some guidance there about how you need to enter into that relationship with your husband, and maybe all

of a sudden his attitude starts changing. Like wow, man, I couldn't agree more. I think the last thing I could contribute to this is that counseling is a necessity to you, guys, regardless of this anger. It's just a marriage is a living, breathing, operating machine, and any machine that we know in life needs to oil change, needs to make change. You need to open the hood. You need to check make sure everything's working properly. And that's

going to require a professional mechanic. Yeah, that's gonna get that's gonna help you, guys. And that says nothing really nothing to do with his anger. This is this is a seven year relationship thing. Anyway that you you should seek wise counsel and marriage counseling, but don't at all costs, don't approach him with that idea saying you're angry, we need to go to counseling. Yeah, you can't say it that way because he's gonna say absolutely not the last

thing that he's going to want to do. Yeah, you guys are a team. You got to see it that way. And I'll recommend a book for you guys by Aaron and Jamie Ivy called Complimentary and it's a husband wife that wrote it together, same topics, but like he wrote it by himself, she wrote it by herself and then they put it together. So you can see it may be something that something simple like hey, babe, let's read this.

I know Leslie and I read through it and it kind of facilitated some conversations that we knew there were some pressure points and it's like, oh, that's that's why you see this this way. Oh that's why you see this this way. So find anything like that that can help be a common ground. That's like a reminder, Hey, we're a team here, we're on the same team. We're not against each other. Love to work, do it. So there's two solid options, marriage counseling one on one, or

a book that you could read together. I'll give you one more option and you could do one to the three or all three. But a conference setting. There's always a couple conferences that could be we would recommend at your local church, but there's all kinds of conferences that you can go as a couple, and you're not the only ones. They're not singling you out, you're a You're in a group of other couples that are every guy,

he man, anonymous. Everyone has problems of some sort in their marriage that need maintenance, and sometimes it's easier for the husband to sit in a crowd where there's a lot of other husbands and a lot of other wives that are dealing with a similar issue, and it could be a weak in type conference that you go to and you could just really cultivate your marriage in that way. So there's three good options. And yeah, thank you, thank you for the question, and we really hope the best

for you. Yeah, good stuff. We're gonna take a break and be right back, guys. Today's podcast is brought to you by Ritual. We deserve to know what we're putting in our bodies and why, especially when it comes to something we take every day. Ritual is clean, vegan friendly multivitamin is formulated with high quality nutrients in bioavailable forms that your body could actually use what you won't find sugars, GMOs,

major alligens, synthetic fillers, and artificial colorants. Plus the fresh taste and delayed release capsule design makes taking your vitamins super easy. I have always struggled with takeing vitamins. I know that we need to supplement our diets with vitamins, but I've always struggled because I start taking them, and I'll take them in the morning on an empty stomach, and then I start feeling sick and it's not worth

it to me. Now ritual comes in. They started sponsoring this podcast and sent me some and it changed everything for me. It's super easy to take. It makes me feel better. There's something about the way that they make it. It just makes my stomach not upset at all. I don't even notice it's going in. A multi vitamin should contain key nutrients informs that your body could actually use and help fill gaps in the diet with no shady extras.

That's probably why Rituals delayed release capsule design delivers high quality nutrients, including vitamin D three and just two daily pills. You're always gonna know what nutrients are taking and where they come from thanks to Rituals, one of a kind visual supply chain. It's now available for men, women teams. Ritual Multi vitamins are scientifically developed to help support different stages of life. They're delivered to your door every single

month with free shipping. Always you could art, snooze or cancel your subscription. It makes it super easy. If you don't love Ritual within your first month, they'll refund your first order. Get key nutrients without the BS. Ritual is offering my listeners ten percent off during your first three months. Visit ritual dot com slash granger to start your Ritual Today podcast is also brought to you all by Raycon, one of my favorite my favorite companies to read because

I love them so much. There's so much going on in the world, whether it's stuff you're excited about, like my podcast, or stuff you'd rather not be you rather not think about. We know where that is on Twitter, so you can. You can't always control the vibes out there, but you can control the vibes in your head with a pair of Raycon wireless earbuds in your ears. Guys, these things fit so well. I go on these long flights that is a super long battery life. They just

fit perfect. They don't you don't start getting ear fatigue like you do on some other earbuds, and they sound great whether you're gonna use them to pump up, wind down, work workout. Raycons are my go to for on the go audio and the new everyday earbuds look, feel and sound better than ever with an improved rubber oil like and feel. It's just it's like skin. It feels so good, and optimized gel tips for the perfect inner fit. These

are impressive. Before you even start listening, you get three different sound profiles to make sure that you're listening to the sound at its best. Pure Mode, Balance Mode, and base mode. These all work out really good. It's way better than your car stereo that you get to adjust the base and trouble and mits. This is way better

than that. There's also all new Awareness mode for when you need to listen to your surroundings instead, so instead of blocking out all the sound, you could actually hear with Awareness mode. It's really cool. Raycon offers eight hours of playtime and thirty two hour battery life that's really good. There's also a built in mic so you could take your calls in your earbuds just with the press of a button. Raycon's half the price of premium other brands,

and they sound just as good. Raycon comes with a forty five day happiness guarantee. Right now, the Grangersmith podcast listeners can get fifteen percent off the Raycon order at buy racon dot com slash granger. That's buy Raycon dot com slash granger say fifteen percent off Raycons buy raycon dot com slash granger. Back to the podcast. Okay, we're gonna get back into these questions, and I have a

lot and there's some really great stuff in here. There's some heavy stuff, there's some some stuff that you know, it's they're difficult, and I want to kind of kick it over to you Burns, okay, and you're gonna you're gonna help me pick it. Unfortunately, out of this group, there's several that just say question for the podcast. Okay,

but I'm gonna read several off to you. The first one is podcast question, and we have leaving someone you love, wedding speaks, question homosexuality, help with my relationship, need advice in life, family issues, a couple more questions for the podcast, and then I've just got married and I need help. Okay, let's go I just got married. I need help homosexuality. Yep, we're gonna go there. And the last one, if we can get to it, will be the second podcast question. Okay,

and gotcha. So let me click on that just got married and need help, which is interesting. That's an interesting subject that they would need help just after marriage, it says, Hey Granger. I love the podcast. I try to listen every time I can. My name is Andrew. Me and my wife have been married for three months. I'm currently on staff full time at a church doing maintenance. I also preach outside of my home pretty often. However, is

a huge issue. I make the bare minimum of what I could make, and that is frustrating every two weeks when payroll comes out. Should I step down from the role in the church and pursue a secular job. I'm not afraid to work a public job. I do not believe I would be outside of the Lord's perfect will if I did. Christ is sovereign in all things, and he does that he does, and right now I'm in a season I have to trust Christ more than ever. I'm a Calvinist by the way I understand God's hand

and is working in all of our lives. I just feel like I could do more for my little family. I have some different job opportunities that I could pursue, but if I left, I would want to leave peacefully and respectful. I could really use some help in the situation. Thanks and God bless It's too easy. He gave himself the answer. Yes, you need to leave, he said. He said, I feel like I have more that I can do Toro five for my family, then go do it. I

totally agree. Burn. You know, like I understand it scary and if you need me and Griz to be like, dude, you can do it. What's his name? He says his name? He doesn't but his name, I got Andrew, Andrew Andrew. Okay, you got our support, man, go for it. It's it's out there. Hopefully you have the support of your wife to do the same. But it sounds like you know what you need to do. It's just taking that last step to say, Okay, I'm going to do it, and

I say go for it. Totally wholeheartedly agree with Bernie. I think Bernie's right. I think you kind of answered your question through the wording of your question. This is on your heart. You just kind of needed a push, and so both of our both of us are going to say, man, you got opportunities, and you feel the Lord's work in your life, and you feel like you you have a because guy's ministry is not just standing on a pulpit, right, Ministry is in the nuts and

bolts of life itself. And you seem like Andrew, you're a person that understands that you're willing to take that and take that that gospel in you and take it into the secular world, into a job and to make enough to support your little family. I think is admirable and totally respectable, and I think you should go for it. And can we just speak to a generation real quick, like, guys, I'm gonna pause for a second just so I don't go off, But can we stop being so passive? Can

we be bold? Can we take chances? Can we fail and it be okay? Can we not make the right decision every time? But just feel like, man, I've talked to my community, I've been in the word. I'm gonna make this decision and I'm going for it instead of just like fiddling around with it for ten years and then you're still in the same place you were a decade later. Make the decision. Just go for it. Yeah, and Andrew, that's not a knock on you at all.

It's not to him. This is to like, I feel like a generation that's coming up that and maybe we're part of that that. I feel like we can just overthink things to the point where we just do nothing. And that's exactly what the enemy wants us to do. Just do nothing, don't make a move. And specifically to Andrew, you say that you do get opportunities to preach outside of your own church. That's not going away. That's right.

You still do that. You still do that. So and if you take this leap and you say, man, I'm going for this God, you are my provider. I'm taking a step of faith. I guarantee you what the experience that you're going to have through that is going to like refine your preaching and give you more faith to draw on and experiences to draw on through His word. It's all you feel like you got a jump jump man?

Do it? You know that, Bernie and I believe that God directs your path and that you can know His will for your life because he is dictating your desires and he's dictating your want to. Yeah, that's good. So when you feel this desire, you've got to believe if you're if you're faithful, and you're a fearful man of God, that you you are in the Word, and you've got to believe that he has put this desire upon you and it's time to act. Do it? Love it man? Okay,

where are you gonna go now? Almostsexuality? Okay, Granger, hope all as well. My parents did a really good job of raising my brother and I around church and showing us what it means to love Jesus. However, a few years ago, my younger brother came out as gay. We made it clear to him that we will always love him and love him just the same, but we will not support his lifestyle. All we can do now is

pray for him as much as we can. However, we can't help but letting the feeling in that we should be doing something more, doing something different to help him. Would love your advice and or your thoughts. Thanks, Colin doesn't say we're Collin's from. Thank you for asking man. This is a bold question, and it's it takes it takes some guts to send this to us, and yeah,

tough to navigate. Yeah, tough to navigate your situation. Tough for us to navigate this, this topic or this question in answering you first, because we don't get to sit with you or your family and discuss this. And two, this world loves to live in sound bites and so and take things out of context. So it's like trying to think like whole thoughts and and and guidance and direction in this kind of format is really difficult when it comes to tough topics or controversial topics. I guess

you could say, but we'll do our best. Yeah, the world, the world screams at this topic right now. It screams at this topic. And the first thing we got to go to. The first thing we have to say is that callin. You're a sinner. I'm a sinner, Bernie's a sinner. This is not this is not you being better than your brother. I'm not better than your brother. I have I have sexual sin in my life. That is, that does not make me lesser or better than your brother in any way, in fact, makes me an equal human

in a fallen world. So that has to be, that has to just penetrate your family. And if there's anybody in your family, I don't think this is you calling, and it might not be anybody in your family, but I'm just going to say it. If there's anybody that thinks that they are more righteous than your brother because he's gay, shame on them. You're not gonna You're not gonna win any battles. You're not going to prove anything by you or anyone in your family. Uh, being more

righteous or more more moral, or by any means. You're just not man. You're not You're not better your dad because because your dad is going to reject your your brother's homosexuality, your dad's not any better. The only thing you could do is just fall back on the word of God. Live by the word of God. He speak the Gospel, Speak the name of Jesus, Speak the message. Speak the message of forgiveness and repentance. Speak the message of salvation, and how it's available to anyone with faith

when repentance in their heart. It's available to your brother, it's available to you and me and anyone. It's available to to thieves and murders and liars and all kinds of sin there is. There is there is no pit of sin that you could crawl too deep that Jesus can't forgive you and save you from. That's the glory of the Gospel. That's why it's that's why it's amazing, that's why we talk about it all the time, because it's a it's a message of a messiah that came

to this earth. God himself became flesh and came to this earth and took on the burden of all sinners and everything that they do and all in all their ways and all their fallen, brokenness, misguided ways. He took on all of that for those that believed in him, and then was killed for that conviction. After he lived a perfect life for our example, and then he was resurrected from the dead, proving himself to be the exact image of God that he said that he was in

front of eyewitnesses. And that message is the gospel, and that message is all you could tell to your brother, and you got to tell it to your dad and your mother, and you got to tell it to yourself, and you've got to believe it. And that is the story of our salvation. Period. Yeah, man I love that, Like, I don't know what else to say. I mean, God, that's so good. Without so Colin, you know things about your brother we don't know. So I would just encourage

you to continue that brotherhood. Yeah, continue pushing in, continue being open about your faith and about what you believe, and curious as to where he is and why he feels the way he feels, or why he believes what he believes, why his standards are what they are, what's the basis without judgment, without judgment, just remain curious. And I believe you guys are going to get to a

place of understanding of each other. There's I think the last question is what can we do to or what it says we can't help, but let in let in the feeling that we should be doing something more, just doing something more for him, yeah, or it says or something different to help him. Yeah, And the answer is no, there's not besides that message of the gospel. I just said, yeah, absolutely, and pray for him, like genuinely intercede for him and for the rest of your family, because like Granger said,

no one here is righteous, not even one. So you need to lump yourself into that prayer. Jesus, have mercy on me the sinner, and have mercy on my brother, and have mercy on my dad, and I have mercy on my mom. You are it. I notice how we're putting the whole family in this so that it's this is not condemning your brother because of because of who he is or what he's doing. That's not because you're

all in this together as sinners. I think what we can tend to do is we can tend to like focus and isolate sin and then category or put it into different categories and hierarchies level. This one's worse than this one, and so now we know who to pray

for more than somebody else. And I think what we're saying is is like, no, if this family can come together under that banner of repentance and under the banner of we are all desperate, I think there can really be some restoration and some healing and some understanding that is not there. I think there can be some exposure of some sin maybe in your parents and maybe in

you that you were unaware of. Without knowing your brother and where his position is in his walk in his faith, if he's left the faith, because maybe he was condemned because he came out, which is not an uncommon story. Yep, right, but it's terrible. It's terrible. You need to put your arm back around and say you're still in this family. Come here, bro, Let's let's have these conver let's have these difficult conversations. Let's wade into this deep water together.

I think there's gonna be a lot of healing there. What happens with him, what happens with you? I mean, only God knows. You can't convince him intellectually to believe the gospel. You can't convince him psychology, psychologically or or philosophically. You're not capable of doing that. And I'm not and nobody is the power of the gospel. It is what

can do it alone. And lean into that and wrestle with your own sin, wrestle with the own your own problems that you're having, with your wondering eyes, with other girls, or whatever that might be, and and recognize that, and love him relentlessly because he's your brother, and don't judge him, and forgive him and and and do give him the grace that that has been given to you from Jesus.

And know that I know that Jesus saves. The power of the Gospel is your message, and that's that's that is your that is your sword that you go into battle with. Is that message, and never let go of it. And uh and and the power of God. The Gospel will do what it's going to do. Hey man, brother, all right, can I can I just pat my own back real quick and say that I just before he has tackled that question on the podcast and I'm a country singer. Yeah, I'll pat you on the back. Wow, dude. Yeah,

I think he did well. Man, I'm not Maybe we'll see how many We'll see how many comments. Yeah, maybe I lost a lot of followers. I don't know, But guys, I'm I'm sticking to a convict that I feel like is the most important message. That's way more important than my own popularity. Yeah. So you wanted to go to one of the generics, Yeah, one of the generics. I just said number two because you know there's two of us,

and okay, I didn't want to give the first person though. Okay, Well, I literally count how many people gave a subject line a podcast question, and I'll go to number two. So there's one two here. We go, little boy, It's a long one. There we go. Don't know what this is? Says hey there. My name is Melissa. I live out in New Mexico, but I've lived just about everywhere on the East Coast, including South Carolina, Maine, Massachusetts, et cetera. I grew up in church ever since I could remember.

Here we go again burns another church question, and I felt the Holy Spirit touch me on multiple occasions, and all throughout my life, I've had moments where I've I've doubted him and I've doubted his existence, and I've always just kept it inside of me, even though I know

that he's real because I've experienced his presence. But every now, but every now and then, as the word gets more corrupt, and as the world gets more corrupt and out of control, I still have these doubts and I don't understand why. Why can't I just believe wholeheartedly? I know that the devil is always trying to draw you away from God? Is that what this is? I also just wanted to say thank you for everything that you do with your family. Congrats on the new little one. I followed you for

a lot of years. Thank you very much. Melissa shout out to New Mexico. Okay, a couple directions with this question. It's a great question, it's it's a common question, and I want to I want to clear something up that you didn't directly say, Melissa, but I just want to kind of speak to it that that our our faith and our beliefs are not they cannot be whimsical. Blind faith can't. It's not supposed to be. It's not more.

We're called no human is called to believe some crazy, weird myth that no one could testify or or clarify in any way. And so the only way that you could lean into this kind of faith is through the only thing. Okay, we have one of two things. We have two things that we could lean into with our faith. One is, and I've heard this said before, the Book

of Nature. It's rarely talked about, but the Book of Nature, it's not a book, it's just it's it's the idea that when you walk out into this world that is in perfect sink, that is in perfect order, the the the have you heard, Bernie, the idea of the perfect

universe scenario. Now, it's this idea that the way, the way that this Earth is and the way that it rotates in this solar system, around this sun, everything about it, everything is so perfect to the point zero zero zero zero zero zero one that it's like it's a crazy number of zeros before that one. It's perfectly aligned in

every way for our existence on this planet. And it's not hard to see when you go to see an incredible sunset, or you see the ocean waves and the tide moving in and out, or you go to the Grand Canyon and take in the space and see the mountains and see a snowflake and the intricacies of the snowflake itself. You see that there is an order to this. There is a purpose that is way beyond the possibility

of an accident. And when we look in the best telescopes that we have, and we look and look and look and deep into the stars, and we struggle so hard to find a planet similar to this one where we can go, oh, there's another one that's perfect. H It's really hard to do that. And here we are in the middle of this solar system, just floating around, and this something about it has an uncanny order that you have to go, Man, this this is go look

at a butterfly. Go look at it, Go look at a little baby, and you go that this is evidence in nature right here. That's the way I called it the Book of Nature. There's evidence here that that that there's a creator, but we don't know who that creator is. Through just that, we just see that there is an order to things. There is a quote unquote higher power to all of this chaos. And the second thing we look to is the Bible, and that's the book, the Word of God that that puts us puts sense to

that Book of Nature. It puts a it puts a an image behind it, it puts a story behind it, it puts it puts the boundary around it. So we go, oh yeah, I see it in the sunset and the snowflake and the baby in the Grand Canyon. And then I read this book, and this book tells me why and who I am and my purpose here and where I'm going after this life. And it gives you all

of those answers. And so through that word, and through meditating on that word and reading that word and listening to other people preach about that word, this gives us a solid foundation for our faith so that when we doubt we're not blind. We fall back on the foundation that is built for us. And this helps you feel like I'm not just believing in a weird myth mystical reason. Yeah, no, I think that's great, man, I Melissa, Yes, okay, I

can relate to Melissa. I had a very short lived music career, and whenever I was writing songs, if you listen to any of those albums, a lot of those songs have to do with the lyrics are very similar, like man, just wrestling and questioning and doubting, like God, are you there? Like man, I don't feel you like I want to. You know, there's just all of this. Well I don't understand. When will I understand? There's a whole lot of that. So this resonates with me, Melissa.

I remember specifically somebody telling me one time though, because I would have these doubts. I would like read something either in the Bible or I'd hear something, and I have these doubts, and then I would kind of chase this trail and just be like, well, I just don't understand this, and so therefore my entire faith would then be compromised. And this buddy of mine, Jacob van Horn good friend of mine said, did you know it's okay for you not to know? So good? He said, because

Jesus knows. It was so simple. And it did take some time for that to really sink in of some of these parts of my faith and some of these parts of like the scripture I was reading, or things that were happening in the world that I just didn't understand. But it was like I had this this you know, eighty percent ninety percent understanding of things that, like you said, like the Spirit had moved, I had seen a move and my eyes had been opened. I believed this like

I can't not believe it. But then this other little bit. It was almost like the Spirit just came and said, hey, don't worry about that. Let's just just one thing at a time. Just keep abiding in me, and I am going to reveal to you the things that I want you to know right now. Maybe there's some things that you just need to trust me about. You don't get

to know everything. You just need to trust me that within this order, that thing that you're kind of that's causing you doubt in all of this, I got that, So don't worry about it, and I don't think that that means like you were saying that, oh well, just trust God blindly and there's no I think sometimes we can get very like overly analytical instead of just being present where God has us in our faith, what he has in front of us right now, and trust that

these things He's going to reveal to us in time. But sometimes we just have to wait, We have to wait on the Lord to do it so good. I want to also validate what Bernie's saying to you, Melissa, that you're not alone and it's not strange that you think that. Of course I've thought that. Of course I've gone through seasons of my life. But you can't rely on a mystical spirit to lift you up all the

time without verifying that through the word. And what I mean is there's a lot of there's a lot of mystical religions or even some of the Abrahamic religions that rely or can say you just rely only on the spirit to speak to you or a dream. And you could talk to a lot of people that go, why do you believe? And their answer is I believe because of self revelation. I believe because God speaks to me. That's why I believe, and that's the end of the story.

And I'm here to say that's not enough, because anyone, anyone could say I had a dream last night that a wolf spoke to me in the woods and the wolf said that he is God and he was wearing a red gown and a purple hat, and his name was Stephen, and it was so real. So I think God is a wolf, and God speaks to me through Stephen the wolf. And you can't convince that person that they're wrong. You can't because they experienced it. It It was a revelation. Stephen the Wolf spoke. It was real, y'all.

It was real. You can't. I'm using that example because there's a lot of people that will say something like that. But unless you could take Stephen the Wolf and then open up the Bible and go where is Stephen the Wolf? And here's not in here? I think that was just the pizza last night, you know what I mean. And I don't mean to diminish your question, Melissa. I don't mean to laugh at it at all, but I'm just trying to say, as a whole, you can't just rely

on personal revelation or personal blind faith. You can't it's got to be concrete. You got to look at you got to look at the word of God or feeling or just relying on how you feel. Can't rely on it. And in the moment there's too many, you know, psalms about just like these feelings of anguish and despair. It's like if they just relied on that, they probably would have walked away, you know. But you can't just rely

on those feelings. It's good. I don't think I don't think I can go to another question after talking about Steven the wolf. Yeah in the red Sorry, maybe that was the pizza and somebody can somebody meme that? Please? Like, we love you guys. That's all the time we have, right you. Thank you. Then we'll see you next time. Ye. Thanks for joining me on the Grangersmith Podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out by

rating this podcast on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel, hit that little like button and notification spell so that you never miss anytime I upload a video. If you have a question for me that you would like me to answer, email Grangersmith Podcast at gmail dot com. Yi da