Welcome to Mortgage Talk with Mark Harriston, the program that not only talks about mortgages, taxes, and interest rates, but Mark and his guest talk real estate trends and you're home. He also answers your mortgage questions to help you make the right financing or refinancing decisions.
Now here's Mark Hairston.
Happy day, everybody, and welcome back to Mortgage Talk with Mark. And I'm your host, Mark Harriston, and I own Texas Mortgage Source. We handle all sorts of mortgage financing residential for building or buying or remodeling or building, so keep.
That in mind.
And I'm really really excited to have a good friend of mine on my as a guest today. I've known Bill for probably fifteen years now, maybe longer at least at least, and I've been trying to get him on the show for probably six months, but he travels all the time. So I finally corralled him to come by this morning, and I'm excited to hear his story a little bit more and share that with y'all. I'll give you a little backdrop on how I met Bill. I
grew up in the Catholic tradition. I'm still practicing Catholic. But I met a woman back in two thousand and five who currently is my wife, named Sherah, and at the time, she was going to this kind of wild charismatic church called Cathedral Praise, and I thought, well, if I want to stay with this lady, I better show up and see what this is all about. So I started attending the Cathedral Praise along with going to the Mass, and I heard Bill preach one time there, and I'm thinking,
this guy is different. As a matter of fact, I think I've never told you this, Bill, but I think you're the best preacher I guess preacher I've ever heard. If you call it that preaching, you know, wow, Yeah, because I've heard a lot of it over the years.
No pure pressure.
But I want to introduce you as a pastor and a preacher and evangelist and a speaker and a prolific writer. And we want to start here with your book in just a minute, but give us a little bit of about your background.
Man, thanks so much for having me on the show. Welcome. Wow, that's an amazing introduction. It's going to be hard to live up to. No, I actually it's a kind of a long history, you know, with with the Gospel and with the Lord. Grew up in a missionary family house and living all over the world in other countries. And then your daddy was Avantil he was, yeah, and we were actually based in Austin here from the age I
was five years old. We moved to Austin, Texas, and Dad was on the radio, which this station was other things back then, but this particular station, Jean Bender was working yeah, all the way back then. Yeah, and yeah, so yeah, we go way way way back. I feel like like a lifelong history with this station. Sure, but yeah, I started I started going to you know, church from the womb, and it kind of grew up with all
kinds of different traditions. My grandfather was a Quaker, dad was Wesleyan Methodist, became Nazarene, met the Holy Spirit in the seventies and dived into the Word of Faith movement, the Assemblies of God and various Pentecostal denominations. Tracy and I went to Bible College in Dallas and Christ for the Nations left there and then a pastoring and an Assembly of God church here in town actually and built
built an Assembly God Church here in town. And then from there we ran into Bethel Church and Reading California with Bill Johnson nearly twenty years ago, and that changed everything. In the middle of it all, ran into Bill Hard at Cathedral of Praise and ended up serving over there for a little while. That's where we met you. It
was fabulous, Yeah, an incredible time. And you know, I would say, you know, the probably one of the strangest theological turns, not that it necessarily changed my particular belief, but in terms of expanding my perspective of how people interact with the Lord in terms of their faith and their faith journey. I was a Presbyterian pastor for three years, which was really a fascinating all over the board and
a half. And then now we're back here in Austin and serving at Bethel Austin, helping to lead their School of Ministry. So I'm a lead trainer over at the Bethel School of Ministry.
You know, I was so impressed years ago. I took you to breakfice coffee one day and because your message resonated with me on different levels and maybe some people, and it seemed to me at the time I could be wrong if memory serves me. You've also studied some of the some of the Catholicistics over the years.
Oh, I love that, and I love the early Fathers. I mean like it would go way away, you know, further back, you know, you know the I mean, I love athanacious, huge fan of Athenation is Athanasius and his book on the Incarnation, and studied a lot around the Council.
And I see in the architecture of the nice creating Gregor needs some and what these guys were trying to accomplish and asserting the divinity of Christ, you know, to make sure that people understood Jesus isn't just a man who attained a god like status because of his works or his piety or his devotion. Works, piety and devotion are great, but you know, they're not going to get you into a position of completely transcending your humanity to suddenly, oh,
you become God. And that's essentially what you know, some of the folks were saying back in that day, and Jesus just a man, and so now we find ourselves saved by works, or at least perfected in our works. As opposed to what Athanasius was asserting was that we are completely saved and perfected in Christ, and Christ alones are surrender to both His grace and His faith for our salvation. That becomes the issue. So but he did he did lift us. I mean there's three, I think
three elements. I don't know where you want to go with this today. But here we are like the dominant are tumbling here. But you know, there's theology, which is the study of God. There's and then there's beyond theology, there's theophony, which is the appearance of God. And that would be that would be I would say in Acts chapter two, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and not just God with us, but within us, making us His home. And then there is theosis. And theosis is union with God.
And that is the fullness of the realization of the fact that it is His divinity that defines our humanity and not that we are God and He is us. We're there's a major distinction there. But as a child of God, like a child of a father, you find yourself being defined by the family that you're connected to. And that is that is what I would says. Theosis is and and Athanasians talked a lot about the Alsa So I love the early I love the early fathers,
you know, uh yeah, Basle the Great and Quitas. Yeah, I thought was Quitas, Polycarp and Ignacious Will and all these I mean all these guys like mastrac Cart. Oh yeah, yeah, my strec Cart was fascinating. Thought. Yeah, well that may be.
That may be a preamble to something I want to mention up front for sure, is your new book. I think you said you've written eight or nine books or co author. This is the second one this year, second one this year. Okay, Well, I love the title. I'm gonna put it up here real quick. Make sure everybody can read this. It's called The Fire Is Not Optional. Yeah, okay, and it's basically recovering the Baptism of Jesus and the
Gospel in the early Church. So what you're talking about now maybe reference of this, but you kind of talk about this new book and what inspire that.
Yeah, A last fall I was I was studying in Matthew chapter three, and I was studying John the Baptist, and I get to the point in the story of John the Baptist, which I I've read, you know, many many times, but you know, certain things will stand out to you at certain times, and on this day, the part that stood out to me the most was the part where John the Baptist is addressing the crowd, which is filled with all kinds of people, including religious leaders,
who were coming out to get baptized by him, which is ironically a new concept for these people. It wasn't like a mick of a bath where oh it's purification ritual. I mean, that's what these people were familiar with. But you would never do a mikvait in a dirty river, and it would certainly not purdue of your sins. And that's what John's doing. He's done and people in the Jordan for repentance, and so even religious leaders are coming out to him, and he realized Pharisees, Yeah, people are
in the crowd. Like he realizes, man, the Pharisees and religious leaders of the community are here to get baptized by me. Wow, you know wow, I didn't know that. And in that moment he looks at him, he goes, he goes, you brewed vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come like it's like he's taunting him. He's smack talking yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then he realizes how much stock they're putting in him, and he goes, guys, the best I can do for use water. That's my paraphrase.
What he says is is I baptize you with water, but there's one coming after me who's mightier than I, and I'm not worthy to loosen his sandals, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. So what he does is when he realizes that people are putting so much weight on what he's doing, he makes sure to tell them, guys, you understand that I am a four runner for something greater, Like what I'm doing is a shadow, that's the reality. And so the
best I can do for use water. But the thing that is to come that you actually ought to look toward is the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. And he doesn't say Jesus in this moment, but he knows who he's talking about. When he sees Jesus coming down the river to down toward the river Jordan, he says, behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Like he recognizes, whether prophetically or intellectually, he recognizes exactly what this guy is here to do.
How's he going to do that? Well, he's already identified what Jesus is going to bring. The baptism of Jesus is the Holy Spirit and fire. And it's not something I would say that even the Pentecostal denominations today have a corner market on because a lot of people are like, oh, you get baptized, and you get all these gifts going on in your life. The fire of God is the
consuming love of God that is absolutely purifying us. People say, well, it's fire of judgment, but he judges us in righteousness. In other words, he judges us as righteous, not based on what we have done, but based on what Jesus did. And so that's the beauty of this baptism of fire. It's in Malachi three he's called a refiner, and he is a refiner's fire, a launderer soap, and so an encounter with the fire of the Holy Spirit of God will change and transform you. That's really what it is.
It's gold going into fire becomes pliable, and if there's any impurities in the gold, they're exposed. It exposed not for the purpose of pointing at them, but for the purpose of dealing with them so the gold can become pure, because that's the goal. The goal is not to find impurity. The goal is to succeed the goal be as purified as it can. That only happens when gold and fire connect.
And so this is kind of the part that really smacked me upside the head when I read this, and that is I was noticing that there was this massive trend toward water baptism in the United States. Baptism revivals you were blowing up, you know, and you know, especially just in the last couple of years, thirty four or five years, that it was a major baptism revival that started at a church in Georgia and just blew up all over the United States. Which is good. And I
don't ever want to disparage anything about baptism. I don't want to minimize any baptism in any form. But what I feel like we have done is we've actually minimized the baptism of Jesus by maximizing upon, or capitalizing or focusing on the baptism of John. In other words, we made the water of the necessity. We made the fire of the option, and for the people who are like yes, the fire of the Holy Spirit. I welcome the fire
the Holy Spirit of my life. They have an encounter with the Holy Spirit of God, they may have a response to that. Both the gifts and the fruit of the Holy Spirit are meant to be manifest in our life because of those things, because of the fire of the Holy Spirit that touches us. When that happens, there is transformation. So I'm always asking people, how's the Gospel transforming you? Because it's not just a good idea, it's
good news that changes you. Right. So the point of the book being the Fire is not optional, is to invite people back into not a place of minimizing water baptism, but a place in let's at least elevate the baptism of Jesus to the same. I would say focused importance that we put on water baptism to help us understand People say, well, you know what water baptism identifying with
the death of burial and resurrection of Jesus. Okay, well, yeah, that's easy to see, except for this John was baptizing before the cross, So how is that identifying with the death of burial and resurrection of Jesus hasn't even happened yet. So I think from John's perspective, he was a placeholder pointing people toward towards this reality that there's something that you need that is coming to you. Oh and it's
not going to come by me or this water. It's going to come in his baptism, which is a holy spirit and fire. A people say, well, didn't the Disciples baptized people. They did, absolutely, the baptized people in water. It was a mark, a symbolic mark of I'm leaving an old life behind, I'm dying to a former way of living, and I'm stepping into newness of life. But the Holy Spirit didn't wait around for us to get the order of well through the water first. And then
it's not the way it works. In Acts, chapter ten, Peter goes to the house of a Roman Centurian named Carnelius, and when he gets to the guy's house and starts preaching the Gospel, the Bible says, in the middle of Peter's talking, the Holy Spirit falls and the fire the Holy Spirit falls on these people, and Peter recognizes it and says, in that moment he goes the same thing that happened to us is happening to these guys, and then he goes, we might as well get him some water.
And so after the fact, Peter, it's not like God moves on Peter to dunk these people. Peter's like, well, let's just check that box. And again, I don't want to minimize water baptism. I just want to point out the fact that I think two thousand years after the Cross, after the Resurrection, and after the coming of the Holy Spirit, we have made the fire of the Baptism of Jesus.
We've done one of two things with it. We've either relegated to fringe groups like the Pentecostals and the Assemblies of God and well, that's for the weird people that are out there that you know, speaking tongues and prophets I and do the weird stuff, right, And we've basically shoved that off to the side, like your strange uncle at a family gathering. It's like put them in the back room, right or we have and there's many denominations that have done this, and I'll go toe to toe
on this one. We have mislabeled the fire of the Holy Spirit of God as a negative, as if it's the judgment of God coming down to just beat us over the head. Well, I will say that it is the purifying, transforming element of the nature and the character of who he is that takes everything that is contrary to who he is and burns it out of us.
You call that judgment all day long. But some people will say, well, judgment is when God comes and beats up all the people who didn't vote like you, or beats up all the people you don't like, right, because we all have our list of people that we want God to drop the hammer on. Sure, and that's what we're hoping. A lot of people are hoping that's what the fire is, and I'm like, no, I'm not seeing that because you see too many instances where God touches
people transforms them. There's this baptism of that transforming fire and what his gold doing fire, It becomes pliable and so it's now workable by an artist. Right, And that's what you see with people's lives. When they encounter the fire of the Holy Spirit. They're not selfish anymore. They become selflessly devoted, like a bond servant of God.
Well, you know it's interesting because it's ironic on some level, because the scripture, the Gospel reading. The Catholic Mass of the day Sunday was at a luke where Jesus said, I've come to put fire onto the earth, and how I wish it was already claims.
Yeah, he's not waiting, he's not hoping. I just cannot wait to beat these people up. That's right, that's right. I agree with you. Well, Hebrews says our God is consuming fire, and John says in his epistles, our God is love. So the two things that said that God is is fire and love. You put those things together and you begin to realize the fire of God is the love of God, and the love of God is the fire of God. So an encounter with the Love
of God will absolutely leave you changed and transformed. Well, I know you're on fire for the Lord. Come on, not just the coffee mark.
That's right, Not just for this thirty minute segment. Yeah, for sure, let's shift gears for just a minute. Because a lot of our listeners are certainly online or Facebook or whatever, maybe not be religious people, you know, maybe they're just listened to the show for whatever reason. But this is a Christian radio show. It's a very appropriate conversation. But what can you share with folks who are and maybe in business. A lot of our a lot of our customers or our listeners are business people.
And maybe the economy is not real good. How can you give them hope through your word or your message. So in addition to ministering and pastoring, Tracy and my wife and I I've been involved in a lot of business and nevers over the years, whether it's you know, marketing resources, books and things like that, and e courses and master classes and whatnot a lot of those things. So we know a lot about marketing, a lot about
about is stepping into that influencer world. But there was a time where we decided we were going to start a business. Okay, and we actually no it was in Orlando, Florida, Florida, and we owned a restaurant and it was like a French restaurant, bistro, coffee shop, and just outside of the Disney World. Yeah, yeah, you know it was but it was really uh, it was catering to the tourist market. And so I had never run a restaurant before, but I always wanted to. It's kind of something sort of
in the back of my mind. So it was like I felt like the Lord gave me, you know, it's like gave me this, gave me this grace to like, oh, okay, you want to get that out of your system. Deal. So here's what it. Here's what it did for me.
And actually I'm super thankful for it. I had never fully understood the pressure that people who own or run, especially small businesses, are under and small businesses and I realized, especially from the associations that I was in, even though a lot of money maybe comes into the business, the amount of expense that people have, it's only going up right, right, And so the amount of expense that people have means that many business owners are you know, breaking even on
life right right. In other words, their profit margins are thin. The profit margins are so thin, and so often like sometimes there was workers that we had hired that financially we're doing better in the end of the day than we were, even though there was right there was a
lot of money coming to our hands. It was like it was there to sustain us, but everything left over it was like do I hire another person, or do I hire another three or four five people and take the pressure off of us, or do I work you know, eighty hours? Yeah, eighty five hours this week and have a little something to show for it, even you always want to try to put something away. Sure, and at the end of the day, my goodness, you know, we
ended up. We ended up like biting the bullet, you know, and working it out and then all of a sudden looking at each other and I'm looking at Tracy, going who are you? And She's going to I don't know, who are you? And we're just like passing every night, right, strangers and so uh, you know, for years called out of that business. For years as a as a pastor, Mark I didn't understand. And I would say this to
every pastor. Maybe this is an important word for pastors who are listening to the show, who have people in their congregation who are business owners, and you have this automatic assumption that number one, they have a lot of money, because a lot of money comes to their business. You think that they're keeping a lot of that. And I would tell you, in a lot of cases, maybe something they are, but in a lot of cases they aren't.
A lot of cases, they're having to make a decision between whether they hire more employees and have a life and sanity and a marriage, or whether they don't hire more, work more and keep more money. I mean, it's like and then the other thing is they may wonder why their business owners aren't more involved in church. And I can tell you from experience, even as a former ministers pastor during that time while I was running that business,
church was the last thing on my mind. Interesting, and the idea of going to church was not to serve. It was I need I need a break from the constant bombardment of faulty there right that that's constantly going on your head because you're always thinking business and juggling business. Matter of fact, I would say we had a business association in Orlando made up of you know, probably two or three hundred buiness owners at a given time. Of that group of people, I can think of two that
regularly attended church. Interesting, most of them didn't. And it's I don't think it's maybe they didn't want to. It's just that they didn't have the bandwidth.
The bandwidth it in the time maybe right now, And I'll use myself as an example. I'll sharing this a little bit before the show. You know, I've been in the mortgage space for forty years and the last few years have been tough, you know. And I've been in a real sort of emotional psychological funk, you know, not terrible, not depressed, not debilitating or paralyzing, but you know, a
little down, you know. And I'm going to get some free counseling here using let's go a script on whatever you can share about, you know, the bigger picture, if you will, Because some small business people get stuck sometimes in their business, like most mentally, they can't see outside.
Of it because it's so much to it, you know, So help me out. Well. You know, Jesus is talking to people during his time who they were business owners, they were leaders, political and religious leaders, but they were also at that time they were being crushed under i would say, under the wheels of a religious system that it becomes so burdensome that it was impossible to live
up to. So Jesus looks at these people, and this is what he says, Matthew eleven twenty eight, Come unto me, all of you who all weary, like all of you. In other words, I'm not discriminating here to just reach out to certain groups of people. Here, come unto me, every one of you who are here's a qualification weary, heavy, laden, burdened down, you're carrying weight. That's it. I mean, I think that's probably the greatest blanket statement that he could
ever give. And that's really everybody, everybody on some level, right, because real or imagine stress doesn't matter to your body. Your body still in process is stress. I was just
talking to a relative in mind the other days. He works one of the actually one of the world's leading researchers in the developer of an understanding of how we fight cancer, and he was basically saying that cancer is your cell, the cell of your body, cells of your body reacting to stress and how they respond to stress. It's like a crowd of people and one person gets spooked and starts swinging at everybody around and now you have a Now you have a fight, and I have
a mass stampede. Nobody knows what's wrong. Nobody knows that, and so what is it? It's a disease, disease, and so what happens. Peace needs to come to bear. In that moment, Jesus looks at humanity crushed in all kinds of ways, physically, mentally, emotionally, and he says, come unto me, and I will give you rest, and that rest in my experience. By the way. Oh man, that's the thing. It's like, you know, he might as well have said, hey, guys, I'm the source of rest. That's why it's called the
Prince of Peace. But then he goes on and says this. He says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am gentle, I'm lowly of heart. In other words, I'm not I'm not going to look at you from a condescending posture. He's a king that postures himself as a servant to wash feet, right, and so he causes friends too, callus his friends, and he says, I'm gentle, lowly at heart. You'll find rest for your souls. That's your mind, your will and emotions. And he says, my
yoke is easy, my burden is light. Now. The interesting thing about that scripture that often gets overlooked is what the yoke is. People will look at that in the English translation, they will go, oh, it's like two oxen or you know, pulling together and let's you know, let's let him do the pulling. And you know, Jesus take the wheel and that kind of thing. Okay, The analogy works but that's not what he's talking about here, Yolk
was the teaching of the rabbi. It was the teacher of the day who was essentially burdening people down with reinstructions and things they had to do. So people were coming to the rabbis and go, what do I do? And the rabbis were saying, ah, I got six hundred and thirteen laws for you. You got to keep them all in order to be right with God. And the people were like, okay, first off, it's a lot of money to be right with God. So I got to sacrifice a ton because apparently I can never completely get
free from sin. And not only that, but I got to keep all these rules and I can't keep them. And Jesus comes along and goes, come to me. There's only two come to me, says, come to me, everybody who's being crushed, and I'll give you rest. And what is he doing? He's freeing us from whatever's burdening us down. That's why was it cast all the cares on him.
It's like we roll it over onto him. And that doesn't mean that we're not you know that we like advocate responsibility, but that means we have a business partner in Jesus. We have a business partner Christ. Now the Bible calls the Holy Spirit. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, the helper, the spirit of truth, who will guide you into all truth. So it's kind of like having a business partner that's better than any AI program out there. It's like he knows, you know,
he's thinking like so many steps ahead. He can see the end from the beginning. He's the Alpha and the omega, so he can see where he's taking you. But he's also aware of the process that we're going through and what that process is shaping and forming in us. So I would say there's two things in coming to Jesus to understand. One is that when we come to him, he's very well aware of what we're going through. And I would say, you know, Jesus, yeah, got a minute
last what can I learn? Teach me? Teach me in this and then listen and let him form something in you. That's the refiner's fire coming and touching the gold. And the other thing is is just a simple help I surrender and that's that pliability of heart and going recognize that you're in this with me. You step into the value of the shadow of death. You're walking in right here, walking with me to lead me out of it, to show me that death is nothing but a shadow. The
current slump I'm in. It's not the end of the story. No, it's not.
And it's not occasionally. He's walking all the time. Yeah, you know, it's not like, oh Jesus showed up. No, no, no, it's all the time.
It's all the time. That's where union comes in. That's theosis, that's a union with Christ, and that's what we have in the New Covenant. I love it.
I can just remember that minute by minute i'd be in better shake. So you know, as expected, the time flew by.
Listen to you, man.
We had a lunch a few weeks ago, and it's just a continuation of that conversation. And I really I really enjoyed and love it. And I appreciate your time, Bill, appreciate what you're all about. Thanks certainly, wish your best and appreciate your friendship.
And anytime, anytime you want to do this again, let's go.
We'll do it again because there's more more to uncovered.
All right, brother, This has been mortgage talk with Mark Hairston. Mark is a mortgage advocate with Texas Mortgage Source LLC, offering personalized mortgage solutions, fast customized quotes, great rates, and service with integrity. Contact Mark at Markhirston dot com Mark Hairston dot com. You can call our text Mark at five one two seven eight nine sixty nine sixty seven. That's five one two seven eight nine sixty nine sixty seven and come back next week for more mortgage talk.