Father, we honor you today. What a privilege it is. We thank you that we get to walk by faith and not by sight on everything we do and we engage even what we're doing here today by faith. Faith that someone will hear this and be encouraged. Faith that someone will be lifted up. Faith that someone will find hope in what sometimes feels like a hopeless world. So Lord, it is our privilege and it is our our motto and our saying and our mantra, we get to do this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Better late than never. Hey, TGIF. Hey, brother. It's Friday. TGIFWGTDT. I never can say that. The initials have to think about it. It doesn't roll off the tongue. I know. It doesn't roll off the tongue. But I do not say it quick. WGTDT. Yes. That's not exactly the best acronym in the world. Hey, brother. How you doing? Man, I'm doing great. Just, man, living the dream, getting to be on vacation. Yes. Sorry, I got my morning voice happening. A little drainage. Yeah. It's
like we haven't seen each other this week. It's been a long time. How many hours? The foursome, Pastor Jimmy Damonette, myself, Tina the Keeper went to Nashville to the K -Love Fan Awards weekend, our third annual trip. Yeah. It's like, what is it? It's like a pilgrimage in a way. It's become that, right? It is kind of a pilgrimage. And it's fun. For those who don't know, K -Love is a ministry that bought up pretty much every single Christian contemporary music radio station
in the country. And so they have a massive audience. And they are pretty much the outlet for any Christian music today. And they do this weekend. where, and it's in Nashville where a lot of these songwriters and performers live, and they have, it's really, it's non -stop worship, music, culminating Sunday night with the awards, which I believe airs tonight on TBN. Oh, that's right. It's usually Friday
night after the awards. Yes. Cool. So if anybody wants to place a Kelsey bet, we can tell you exactly who won the Artist of the Year, but we won't. I wonder how many people are betting on that. That'd be solid. That'd be awful. It's not cool. But it was just like the last year and the year before. Our cups got filled to the brim. See, we got in. Well, actually, we left Thursday night, stayed in Austin. in the wonderful courtyard by Marriott with a very small kind
of uncomfortable pillows and mattress. Yeah, I don't want to complain. I just don't want to be like that. You know what I mean? It wasn't super great. It was not. And so we had an early flight and we got in. First thing we did is we went straight past. We didn't go to the hotel. We went downtown Nashville. What's it called the the gulch the gutter the the gulch the gulch cool place the gutter It's the happening place
though. It's pretty cool. Yeah, we met up with sir Patrick Cobol who was longtime Well, he's the Duke of the South for the no agenda show and he's been a huge supporter of we get to do this and he took us out to lunch at Arnold's That was awesome, which is a barbecue joint, which is just so I mean you live for food. It's old -school in the south you call that meat and three. Oh, meat and three. That's it. Oh, OK. So meat and three means you get one meat, you
get three veggies, or dessert. And it's old school, man. Total comfort food, total south, total indulgence. And hopefully, I mean, he says, this may be the last time you ever eat here because of the property taxes. I mean, literally, it's almost like. That movie where the old lady doesn't want to sell her house and all these high rises around her. Yeah, there's construction all over the gulch. And there has been for a long time, many years.
They just keep building and building, but they're like some of these smaller, you know, home owned businesses and local owned businesses that have been there at restaurants. For decades, probably. Are just getting swallowed up by the big stuff. Yeah. Yeah, that's the sad part. I get it though. It's progress. Give and take, right? Yeah, take the good with the bad. Patrick also gave us our first merch. Yes, which I left sitting on the table at home. Made cool coasters. I was running
late, so I was like, oh man, I got to go. Yeah, no, they're really good. I dressed up for you, obviously. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, it looked like I'm on vacation. I'm actually wearing the same thing I wore all weekend at Caleb. There we go, man. It's my three nails hoodie. That's the way it works. The way we boys roll, that's for sure. But it was so, so nice just to catch up with him. He's such a beautiful man. He really is. And he's on fire for Jesus.
And he's doing a lot with veterans. He's a veteran himself. Man, I love what he's doing. doing and he's really trying to help. I mean, so many veterans have just so many. Mental issues, PTSD is real. I've seen it, you've seen it. And Patrick, too, I think was, of course, how could he not be affected? He's told us some stories. But really, through the love of Jesus Christ, he's really blossomed into just a guy doing so much for his community. He runs Boy Scout Troops. He's just doing so
much. And he's doing a podcast, which you can find on... Listen to a little bit. I caught some of that. It's a lot of local, very local issues, which is great. I love what he's doing. Now remind me of the name. Now I feel dumb. Hold on a second. It's the name of his town. Yeah, you sent me a link. It's the name of his town. Hold on. I feel... Oh, he lives in Fairview. Fairview, yes. Something Fairview. You think it's Hello Fairview? I think you're right. Let me just check. I can
find this. Sorry, Sir Patrick, bro, who totally bombing on you. We love this show, man. Yeah. Hello, Fairview. I was right. There it is. You find that on the Godcast. Hello, Fairview. Oh, that's right. Yeah, it is. That's where I listen to it. Yes. And then the weekend. I mean, your impression? Our buckets are running over. I mean, literally, our buckets are filled. Our buckets are running over. I'm still buzzing from it and
just thinking about. There was one moment in particular that, you know, the whole thing is good. You can't just say, this is the best, you know, because it's all good and all the artists have something unique to bring. But I have to say, if I was just looking for a moment, it was when Ben Fuller came out with just his guitar in the middle of all this. Oh, at the award show. At the award show. Stood up on a table in the middle of the audience. With one spotlight on
him and sang this song with his guitar. Black Sheep. one of my favorites. That's such a throwback to another day. That sound, that western, it's kind of a western vibe. I mean, it felt like you're watching, you know, Gunsmoke or something, you know, some of the old westerns, but it's also a storytelling. It's a story. Anyway, check out that song, Ben Fuller, Black Sheep, just acoustic guitar and just... pure heart and soul. I mean, his story by itself, I think he was saved
seven or eight years ago, I want to say. Well, he's been sober seven years, I think is what he said. I think it's been a culmination of things. But yeah, I mean, he's got tats head to toe, man. He's had a long road, but my gosh, he's such a picture of redemption of somebody who went and he said he was on cocaine for 15 years. just nearly died. I mean, literally crashed himself,
crashed his plane into the ground. But to see somebody like Kim, kind of reminds me of Mel at our church who had a hard go of it and then got radically converted, saved, born again, and is totally grateful. He makes some of the same moves. He does that. He gets so excited. That's great. And he does a lot of prison ministry too. He does concerts in prisons all across America. sharing his story because he's been there. He knows these guys and he walks in and they're
like, you're one of us, man. He just has the look. But man, what a heart of gold. But that moment, I think just the juxtaposition of all the glamour and glitz of an award show, massive sets and lights and video and bejeweled dresses and the whole thing. And then you got him out there, just an old... But even Friday night, the thing was Friday night, they do kind of like an opening concert. And there's a lot of production
stuff that takes place. I remember the first year, the bass was like burning down the walls and stuff is happening. First night's rough. Of course, lyrics aren't on the screen. This is tough for me because that's one of my main features, I feel. That's your pet peeve. I love the lyrics on the screen, man. It's like the the soundboard rebooted the minute he was supposed to come up and you know fashion burn They all
have in ears. They're standing there. You know, they're playing they're like, how come people are acting so weird? Everybody's looking at us weird and then yeah, but he he just said okay, hold on and I just reset he came out and boom He just killed him. I mean so many in I've seen artists walk away. Yeah and say, I'm not coming back. I'm not, I'm not doing this. Get it together. I don't want to be a part of this. That's not this. Yeah. And the only thing that, and we talked
about this. So we had the writers round table, which is really nice because the writers talk
about the story behind the song. And so it's understandable that many all a lot of great art comes out of pain and heartbreak and But throughout the entire weekend with the exception of Brandon Lake during the award show everything was The Lord is here for you when you're going through that season when when times are tough you got a bad I mean I it's now cliche almost you got a bad diagnosis, I mean These are things that I hear Christians in performance places say over
and over again, which of course is true. But for me, and I came to Christ in a very happy way. Now, of course, I was broken, I'm still broken, and there's all kinds of things that the Lord helps me with and helps me understand and takes me through. But I really didn't get anyone ever saying, with the exception of Brandon Lake, I have joy right now just because I have joy, the Lord is here, I'm happy, things are
going well. It's almost like he couldn't say, hey man, I'm rejoicing, thank you God for everything in my life is great right now. And it won't be that way, I know, but right now it's great, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, which is, I feel blessed because early on I'm like, hey, things are great. Thank you, Lord. This is fantastic. And then when it's not, so I think we are so quick to forget. And this kind of took me down a path of comparing this to the general world
that we live in right now. Can I comment on that before you hit that road? Go for it. It's going to be a good road to follow. So I'm the same. When I came to faith in Christ, I wasn't at the bottom. You know, I just, man, Somebody presented the gospel to me. I was leaning over the hood of my truck. I prayed, boom, God's there. And I never had that gutter to glory thing. I mean, I was an idiot. I was an idiot in high school.
I mean, I was that kid, right? Just partying, girls, all that, you know, drugs, sex and rock and roll. I mean, I can't see that on you at all. I know you can't, but I did like to have some fun. I was, boys just want to have fun. That was me. And a lot of it was, you know, I was kind of mad at my dad and stuff because my parents got divorced and said, you know, there's that just kind of just a way to plug the pain.
But when I got saved, it was so good because it's called the gospel, which the word gospel means good news, not OK news or so. So, yeah, you know, maybe you'll make it. No, it's good news. It's the greatest news. So when I got born again at 18. blending over into 19 right about that time. It was all up from there, man. I was just like, yes. And I would sit in churches and I'm not going to name the denomination I was part of, but they were just like somber and sad
and mad. I was like, Has anyone heard that this is a good thing? And I really struggled as a young Christian. And you know my spirit, man. I'm excited on Sundays. You and I are very much the same. I'm happy to be here. We're happy we woke up. We get to do this. It's not just some cute cliche. It is my life mantra. It's my slogan. I mean, it's my declaration, declaration of faith. And that doesn't mean crap doesn't happen, and bad things happen, and people get hurt, and people
die, and people betray. I mean, all this stuff, wars happen, you know? The world loses its mind here and there. However, on the flip side of that coin is it's a win -win for a Christian. No matter what happens on this earth, this isn't the end game. Amen. And so we know, the scripture says, where Jesus says, who for the joy set before him endured the shame and he despised it, the
scripture says. It means he stepped over, he literally like walked over the shame because he knew what was coming for the joy set before him. He knew what was coming after the crucifixion. He knew there was going to be a resurrection. And when you have that mentality of going, man, no matter how bad it gets, there's a resurrection coming after this trial. There's good coming.
That's how God is. So I agree with you. The whole theme was beauty to ashes or ashes to beauty, which kind of sets up a, here's my, here's how bad I was depressed last year. Oh, but God's good. I mean, every one of them had a depression. I know I was kind of like, I felt like you, man. At first I was kind of, oh man, this is really good. They're really ministering to people. But then after a day of it, I was like, okay, can you turn the corner now? This is good news. Remind
people this is good. And I just, I feel your pain. And so what this, it made me reflect. I mean, all the way home, I'm thinking about this. And in particular, I see this pretty much everywhere around me. People are stuck. They're angry. They're sad. Christians. They don't see the joy or the good works God is doing for them. And social
media. I mean, we talk about this a lot. I mean, we cannot ignore that this has really captured the... I mean, fear is just such a perfect emotion, and the enemy loves to capitulate on that, and so do algorithms, and so does advertising. The world has always, you know, I've said it before, you want these girls, you better be driving this car. If you don't drink this beer, then you're
going to be a loser. So that's fear, FOMO, it's all different versions of fear, but you're going to die if you don't, blah, blah, blah, blah. Your kids will have no future, et cetera, et cetera. And what has happened in our culture today is First of all, I want everything right away, right now. I want the world to be great. I want everything to be fixed. I want it all done. I want everything now, now, now. But also, we want to prosecute the responsible. We need
prosecution. We need justice. End this war. Kill the rich. The boomers failed us. Israel controls us. Hard seasons, as K -love people would say. It's so easy then to identify with people who may have it worse than us and then to go after the people. This is literally what the hard left liberal mantra has been. It's like this is why you get gays for Gaza, which by itself is just an insane thought. That's an oxymoron. Completely.
But now you see People on all sides of the political spectrum going to this this we got to blame someone and you know, and it's Trump the oppressor exactly the victim that and and people don't even see that they are Doing exactly what they've probably even railed against maybe two or three or four years ago so I have such a benefit of being a new Christian like I can still think hey We say so easily, we view the world through a biblical worldview. Well, I actually wanted to do that
in this case. Joe Rogan said once, if only there was like a manual or something. I remember that, yes. There's some kind of book that could help me get through life. And so I did some research, completely admit I use some AI for this, which is great for research. And it came up with a couple, because I'm just saying, show me the scripture that talks about internal conflict being projected outward. James 4, 1, 2. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among
you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and wage war. This struck me so hard. I'm like, yeah, when people feel like they don't have control over their lives, finances or future, which guess what? You don't. I realized this in 1990, like you don't control it. You can only control what you can do at the moment. Then we're always looking to hammer something. This is a
simple one, Luke 11, 34. your eye is the lamp of your body when your eye is healthy your whole body is full of light but when it's bad your body is full of darkness therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness it's like look at your own eye people just and it's it's easy to say but when you read it in scripture i mean i'm doing it myself i am not immune to any of this obviously And then this kind of fits perfectly. Again, I love James. For whatever reason, James
just always hits me so well. Let every person be, of course, quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to get angry for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Galatians 5, but if you bite and devour one another, hello social media, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. I mean, come on, this is so good. So how do we get out of it? this is, I also went searching for this. And I'm just trying to say, you know, it's like, I got a new car. I didn't
know how something worked. I went to look at the manual. The manual actually wasn't in the car. They forgot to give it to me. And I called the guy, I said, hey man, I don't have my manual. And I really felt lost even though I went online and you go online. Oh, well, this is manuals .com and there's 8 million different versions. It's not the right one. It's a different variation. So I was so happy. It was just this one light that was coming on. What does this mean? And
it's to me, it's exactly the same thing. Galatians 6, 4, let each one test his own work. We've talked about this. For each will have to bear his own load. Focus on what's right in front of you, what's happening in your community. It's so limited to go straight to Washington DC. Tend your own
garden. Yeah, oh, there's a good one. Thessalonians 4, aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands, I want you to explain that in a second, as we instructed you so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. Could you? Give me some enlightenment on this one. The work with your own hands. It's mind your own business, literally. There you go. That's what he's saying. With your own hands. You're not pulling everybody
else to your stuff. You do what you do. Stay focused. It's very simple. It's so simple, we miss it. There's a lot of things in Scripture that are right there. but we're always looking for a complex answer. If it's not complex, then it must not be truth. Truthfully, I think it's the transverse. If it's simple, it probably is true. These simple truisms, we want things complicated. We're so used to we complicate everything, right? Yes. Anything left to itself moves that way.
I mean, just think about an extra room somebody has in their house. It just starts to collect things. You know what I mean? It becomes that room, the one that you keep the door closed and you warn people not to go in that door. That's called my studio. And my office at home. So yeah. And it comes in here and she always has that look and says, are you going? I said, don't even finish the sentence. I know exactly. I'm not going to clean it up. It's perfect. Unless Adam
comes over and then I might clean it up. Wow, thanks. Well, you don't have to do that for me, which I appreciate. I moved it from the studio into the closet. Oh, I get it. The closet that has a warning label. You haven't seen my closet. First of all, it has about eight guitar cases, all stacked in a row. And then, oh, it's unbelievable. Anyway, we... Digress, yeah, digress a little bit. So it literally means focus on your own stuff and quit worrying. Run your own race. Stay
in your lane. There it is. We're always worried about somebody else. And the only thing I learned in track in high school, because I hated it, because I had to do it to run to play football. So it was stay in your own lane. You run out of your own lane, you're disqualified. You're out of the race. Not only that, when you look at what other runners are doing, you lose your pace. You lose your pace, your rhythm. I love that as believers, we have these words because
it's just a reminder. I think we forget. I forget all the time, but I'm so new in my faith. Let me stop for a second here. What happened three years ago? What was it three years ago? Not 35 years ago. Right. Oh, yeah. I remember it was James. A lot of it was James. I can't forget last what week. I mean, yeah. Which brings me right back to A Great Awakening, where not even a decade after the Civil War, they had all forgotten
what really got them to that great victory. Oh, man, we've been praying for our daughters because they all go through different things at certain points. And it's two things. It's fear. And we just we live in this fear based culture and blame the guy at the top. You know, and we just we've forgotten to. It's because fear sells. Well, yes, it does. It seems very well. I don't think people even want to get clicks. You want to get comments. You want to get followers and just
Crank out the fear. I don't even think that people are doing it for the clicks and for the followers They're doing it because that is the loop the whole world the whole culture focuses you on that and agree and I Sometimes don't even see it I I got into a couple of comments on X this morning And I'm like and I had to stop myself even as I was preparing for this very show. I'm
like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Yeah, no fish on a hood and people weren't even Yeah, there's some trolls in there, but people, I love this, it's like, you're not as critical as you used to be because you're now a Christian boomer. I'm not sure. By the way, I was the face of Generation X. Give me those three months. outrage culture. It basically is saying, what's wrong out there that I can't fix, that I'm going to yell about. Remember that band Rage Against the Machine?
I have to say, I love that. We were all yelling with them. Even now, I'll pull up on YouTube and watch one of their videos live at one of the festivals. I'm like, wow, that rage was real, man. Those guys, they were mad. But it created amazing art. When you rage against the machine, what do you really get? A hit record? Tired? Or a hit record. There you go. A hit record. That's it. You become a three -hit wonder, you know. That's it. Yeah. So, do you have more Scripture?
Are you going back to... Well, I was just going to say that... So, what I realized is... So, the outrage culture is saying, you know, what is wrong in the world that I can't fix? I'm going to get, you know, rage against the machine. And everything I see in Scripture is... And this is what is good right here, right now that I can praise. This is what I missed a little bit at the weekend. What can I praise right now?
And what is broken here that I'm responsible for mending, which can even be just a word with your spouse in the morning where you just kind of got shifted in a weird way. And man, the more I think about this, the more I am stopping in the middle of my day all the time praying. You know how sometimes your spouse can have a bad day and that affects you. And I catch myself like, well, I'm having a bad day now because my spouse is having a bad day. I'm like, no,
stop. pray for your spouse. And that lifts your spirits too. And this is a free gift that I got from our Lord Jesus, and I love exercising it every single day. Man, that's all win and no loss, you know what I mean? I got a scripture I want to share. You started in James, so I want to loop back to James to the first chapter. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know. pure joy, and you know that the testing of your faith develops
perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." I mean, that is just so down to earth. Mature and complete. Mature and complete. That means finished, man. In perseverance, I mean, we've talked about just how we've cultivated a culture through decades of having no resilience, no endurance, no perseverance. And we talk about being forged by hard things, but our parents, I just remember my dad teaching me what it meant
to persevere when things got hard. It wasn't easy. There were things that were hard in our family and hard in our life. And man, I remember when he was a firefighter and four firemen got killed in a fire, in one fire. Cause their Scott air packs failed. It was devastating to that community. And I was part of that community growing up. And I just remember watching my dad persevere. You know, they didn't quit. They didn't run away.
You know, when I was in high school playing our coaches, man, you talk about getting your grill, man, they would like today would be considered abuse. Then it was, then it was called coaching.
Yes, you're right. If one of my coaches piled drive me into the ground to show me how to block somebody I didn't get up and say I'm quitting I saw you're abusing me if I can just energize I saw we saw this happening in 2000 I want to say it's around 2009 2010 where bullying bullying in schools and then bullying became a hate offense which later became a hate crime and And I remember I was astounded by all these news reports about
bullying. I said, I grew up with sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me. And then we saw words are violence. This shift happened 15, 16 years ago, and it was real. And I can only say it was the enemy, probably. But it was virtue signaling of the highest order, where it was like, oh, these poor people, they're being abused. And there's a rightness to that because bullying shouldn't happen. I mean, it
is a terrible thing. But what became a part of culture and normalcy or normative for all of us, I learned to navigate social issues by avoiding bullies. You learn things. I was like, okay, here's what not to do. Don't look weak. Don't stick yourself out there. Don't go over in that corner of the cafeteria or the playground. You learn to navigate hardness and hard things. I'm not pro -bullying. Don't hear what I'm not saying.
But I'm saying whatever trial you're going through or test you're going through, how you respond to that will dictate the outcomes of your life. And I just learned to avoid, I learned to navigate, I learned the politics of life. And it's not a bad thing. I think I failed my daughter in some ways and to some degree on that and made it easy. I made a lot of things much easier for her than I had. I mean, just the fact that we all have a thousand dollar phone in our pocket
is by itself. I remember I had to beg my parents because I saw the wild one with Marlon Brando. I begged them for a year for a leather jacket. And here's what they made me do. So it was, you know, a leather jacket is expensive. They got me a leather jacket for my birthday. It took me a year of, I need a leather jacket. And they forced me and I did it. When at school, there was, I had a chain and a padlock and I had to chain and padlock my leather jacket. to the coat
rack so it wouldn't get stolen. And I was simultaneously cool because I had a leather jacket and the biggest dork because he's locking up his jacket. And maybe it was 300 bucks. But I mean, it's a question. Did you appreciate that jacket? I did. Of more than you can imagine. I think we all have stories. For me, it was getting a set of Firestone white letter tires for my 69 Chevelle. Bam. I had really bad tires on that car because I pretty much burned
them up. So driving on bald tires, I was talking to my dad, dad, I gotta have new tires. And here's what I want. I have to have them and here's what I want. And he was like, Hey, I can't afford that right now. You're going to have to wait. I don't want to wait. He said, yours are not dangerously bald. You're still safe. And I'm like, well, it depends on how fast I'm going. At a 119, that may not be safe. But I was like, same thing for a year. Not quite a year. But
I'll remember him. He said, hey, I'm going to take your car to town. Today, I was like, why? And he came up with some excuse. He lied. Dad lie. Because he was going to do something nice for me. I'll never forget hearing him come down the road and I saw him turn the corner and those white walls were glistening. I still have that memory burned in my brain and I cherished and valued that because I had delayed gratification. Delay is not denial. No, but boy, it makes it
sweeter when it finally comes. So this kind of fits into what happened on our way back from Nashville. You guys stayed there, visited family. So we're in the plane. It was one of those small Embraer regional jets. So one seat on the left side, two on the right side. A seat and a half ahead of me because a family was sitting there a husband wife two kids behind them and one to the left Yeah, and it's okay. It was a relatively short flight And so I'm listening to this is
the crazy thing. I'm listening to Another Glenn Beck episode this now it was about George Washington, you know, we talked about this and George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin. So he continues with the series of, you know, early America. And I'm kind of, you know, fading away. And, of course, you can't tell that I'm listening because I'm a hearing aid, and I'm doing on the Bluetooth thing to the hearing aids. And the guy, he's on the one row ahead of me on the right, turns around and
says, Adam. I'm like, huh, what? And I have to turn off my player. He says, he starts talking in Dutch to me. He said, you know, I'm Diederik and I just want to say hi. I grew up watching you in the Netherlands and listening to you on the radio and I've been following your career this whole time and I just wanted to say hi. It's so cool to meet you. I said, oh, that's really nice. He said, you know, what do you do? I write screenplays, and he's wearing this hat
with Young Washington on it. And he said, I wrote the screenplay for this new movie, Young Washington. I'm like, I was just listening to a podcast about George Washington. And you know me, I'm like, no coincidences in the kingdom. And he says, yeah, is this your family? He said, you got a beautiful family, like 10, 12 year olds. And he said, my wife, Kelly, she's the CEO of Wonder Project. I'm like, what? Crazy. I send you $9
a month. That's awesome. And so we're chatting and he says, well, you know, we're just talking about, he's telling me about the movie and how, what a struggle it's really been. Cause his wife set up Wonder Project three years ago with John Orman, the director who did High David and Jesus Revolution. And, you know, how it's been a struggle to get marketing going and stuff. I said, well, I can, I can introduce you to Glenn Beck. I'm sure you'd have a fun story to talk about on
his radio show. Yeah, it'd be awesome. And I was really, it was really just one of those meetings. I'm like, there's too much going on here. That's amazing. And he sends me a text as we're, you know, we're deep playing and we're leaving and he says, hey, we actually have a screening of this movie coming up on Wednesday. We'd love for you to come. Wow. And this movie is exactly what we're talking about. It's almost like the prequel to Star Wars. It is about George Washington
before. everything happens. I can't wait to see that. And you want to talk about going through some hard times and what shaped him and what shaped the Virginia militiamen to becoming the Blue Coats and becoming them who... Notwithstanding that he chopped down the cherry tree. Yeah, you know, there's none of that in the movie. I don't want to give it away. That's the only thing I
remembered as a kid. There's definitely some... I think that is probably the biggest lie about George Washington, which is literally about not telling a lie, which is kind of funny. And there's Kelsey Grammer in it, Ben Kingsley, Mary Louise Parker, very, very good cast. And it's a good date movie because there's a little bit of romance in there, a lot of stuff blowing up and guns
and stuff. But also history I really didn't realize about the British and the French and the the Indians I'm sorry Native Americans the Indians they call themselves Indians in the movie Who were here in the Ohio Valley so but the resilience that built George Washington one of the founders of our country is really phenomenal. And they previewed it at the LBJ library. They're doing it at the Bush library, the Reagan library. They're
doing it at all these different libraries. And it'll be out July 3rd for July 4th weekend, which is a great opportunity to go and see this. And I realized, once again, I don't know hardly anything about the true story of our Founding Fathers. You just don't know much about it, which I think
Why this is so exciting. Well, we tend to romanticize a lot of it to think, oh, man, these had this charmed life and, oh, they had some hardships, but we don't realize, you know, your feet falling off because of frostbite, you know, no big deal, right? I mean, we just don't, we can't put ourselves into that situation. I'm talking about the death march that they made, you know, during the war. I don't know if that - No, this is even before
that. It's before all that. But what produced and forged and formed them, to use Bret Hahn's words, was hardness, hard things formed great men, strong men, resilient men, not perfect men, but strong men who were able to defeat the greatest force on the planet at the time, which was the British. They were just shining them, like, okay, you stupid little boys. You can have a rank here. You're Colonel. It means nothing because it's not an appointment by the by the crown, et cetera,
et cetera. So it's just a great movie. I love this young couple who have been building this wonder project. And whereas I kind of felt a little bit. hoodwinked when Amazon gave away House of David for free the first season and then it's like now you got to subscribe for a wonder project. That was sneaky, wasn't it? No, I felt good. I want to support these people. Man, I'm glad you got to meet them. The distribution is by Angel. They're distributing it in theaters.
It was funny because I said yesterday on Noah Jenner, I said, hey, I saw this movie and Dvorak goes, oh, is it one of those Christian movies? He said, why do you say that? You only go to the movie theater if it's a Christian movie. I said, yeah, I guess. A lot of it was blowing people and things up. Man, I'm glad that happened. There's a reason for this. I'm going to see these people more. I know there's something that's
going to come out of this. One of the things Annette and I said as we got on the plane to come back, there was so much favor on this trip. I don't know that I've ever been on a trip where more things happened in terms of just, oh, you pray, you and I are in the parking lot. Last year we had to park a mile away from the Grand Ole Opry in the mall parking lot. We're out in the boonies, right? And we were late. We had
dropped the girls off for the award show. We're probably not going to get in, so we're hustling. So we dropped the girls off. We turned into the first row of the parking. and you prayed out loud, Holy Spirit, something would you give us? Yeah, I said, Holy Spirit, could you please give us parking favor at this moment? And it wasn't 10 seconds later. I saw family walking to their car. We rolled up beside them like criminals, going, hey. You're getting out of there. Hey,
don't be afraid of us. We just want something from you. You're a parking spot. You're right. It was so cool. I mean, the rooms we had, which are the most... Unbelievable. Unreal. These are, that wasn't a junior suite, that was a senior suite. There's only like five of these rooms. I looked, you know, just, it happens to be this one configuration. We have this huge living room, with basically a regular room attached to it. And that's the room. And we both got those rooms.
I know, right? And then it was right around the corner from the venue. And if you've ever been to the biodome, it's usually a mile to wherever you're getting to, right? And it's a maze to get through that place. But we were literally right there. Everything was favor. From beginning to end, even coming back, I got to meet this amazing lady from Africa who was helping out at the Delta Lounge. She was the sweetest person.
She came over to Annette. She started talking to us with beautiful accent, beautiful older lady. She talked to us like she knew us. Annette was like, do we know her? She literally talked to us. as though we know each other. And then she said, maybe she saw Jesus in us. Because you know how lounges are. Nobody looks up. It's like, oh, don't be friendly. Headphones on. Don't be friendly. I'm in a covey hole. I'm protected. It's a weird dynamic in those lounges. I just
watch and I'm going, ooh. Just a lot of coldness, you know? Yeah. Maybe they just feel like you're supposed to do that. It's also built that way. It is. With the streets that are kind of like little cubicles. Please don't interact with your neighbor. Put your earbuds in and don't interact. But we're just always nice to people. So I'm always talking, hey, thank you so much. Oh, and here's how I hit it off with her. She said something. I said, you have a beautiful accent. Yeah. Where
are you from? Which in some... in some cases is a microaggression. Really? Oh, you have no idea. To say you have a beautiful... Or even worse, where are you from? Oh, wow. Oh, you didn't know this? No. I ignore it too, brother. So far it's been good. I've never had anybody get weird with me. The thing is, when you do it, people are always happy to tell you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Every Uber. Hey, man, where are you from originally? Yeah, that's what I say. How long have you been
in America since you were a kid? Most people love to talk about themselves. That became a microaggression. I'm sorry, that didn't mean anything. Interesting. Anyway, she was so sweet, and she took care of us after that. She was coming over, picking our stuff up. That's a simple thing, but when I see the favor of God on things, I don't see it as simple or less than, because anything in the kingdom is good. Yeah. Even if
it's little things. Yeah. And really, if you think about it, it's the little things that make up your day. It's not the big epic moments that happen every once in a while. It's the dailies. And as those things happen and you get a whole string of good things, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you go, that's the favor of God. That's not normal. And to bring it all the way around. These are the moments that I keep trying to remind myself. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, God. Thank
you, Holy Spirit. Thank you, thank you. This was amazing. This moment, let me rejoice in this moment and not just when I'm feeling down or feeling bad or going through a season. I've talked about this before, but I think it bears repeating. Some things you just need to say over and over, right? I need to be reminded and re -reminded. Most of my prayers, you know, I've been a Christian now a long time, you know, 40, nearly 50 years, and I'm still as excited as I was when I was
a kid. I mean, I'm just like, boom, you know, get to do this. And living up in a down world, right? I mean, all of my little phrases have… Pjisms, yeah. Most of my prayers, I'd say 90 % of what I pray is pure gratitude. I am a broken record. I'm sure God's like, I get it. I get it. Move on to another topic, but I can't help it. Partly because I've had hard things happen in my life at different seasons. Had my wife leave me for another man, not Annette, obviously.
And that was devastating and just crushing, soul crushing. But yet God brought Annette into my life 34 years ago. We have such a great marriage. It's crazy. We're best friends. We love to do things together and be together and we work together. It's insane. I have so much to be grateful for. This life I have, friendships. Man, you and Tina, we travel so well together. It's almost insane. Very few people can do what we do. That's actually kind of cool. We came back from the concert or
dinner or whatever. We get into the elevator. You're on four. We're on five. And we don't even have to make a plan. It's like, hey, we'll see you tomorrow morning, right? Yeah, OK, call in the morning. Boom, done. We're gone. We're going to bed. And there's no stress. There's no weirdness, no awkwardness. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for whatever that is that makes that so easy. It's called good friendship. I mean, it's real. Yeah, we're so blessed. We're so blessed Thank you. I'm so
blessed. Hey, by the way, on the Godcaster, let's give a plug for the Godcaster. You've dumped some new music in there. Oh, you like it? I've been hearing the new tunes. Okay. Thank you. Loving it. Thank you for doing that. I was listening on my Godcaster coming in. Not like I didn't get some inspiration from the weekend. I know, right? I'm like, worshiping hands up, phone. Okay, let me just put that in there. Let me just add this. A lot of new songs. Yeah, thank you.
Thank you. Also, some of that comes from Ben Hillegos. He's managing Providence Voice, which is their version of Hello Fred. He is so all into this. I gave him the new interface. He's actually my guinea pig for the AI console that helps you manage the station. It says, I'm just keeping a spreadsheet here. So, you know, here's another 15 songs. And so I listened to them all, like, yeah, and they're pretty much all spot
on. I found some shorter versions for some of this stuff, which he appreciates because he just finds the songs that this is it. I'm like, man, let's get the studio version of that and not the eight minute worship version. Yeah, yeah. So, but it's really, it's a collection I get. texts from many of the women in our church who text me, like, how about this? Do you have this? Is this on there? It's 11 minutes long. I mean, I can't do that, Karen. No, but most of them
are just like hit stuff, you know? They're like, this has really been helping me this morning. I want other people to hear this song. So it's a community effort. It really is. I'm noticing something too. You're getting a lot more community stuff in it. I've noticed you've been adding layers. Yeah. you know, city council stuff, also other podcasts, beginning to boost other podcasts that are out in our community. I love what you're doing there, brother. I'm noticing those nuances.
Someone who doesn't listen all the time might not notice, but I do. I'm listening. And so I know you do. You're doing great. I love it. We need to let people know how to get the Godcaster so they can start listening. Well, you can just go to your app store and type in Godcaster and get it that way. That's really the best way.
And of course, we also have web versions, so if you just want to give it a shot, you can go to the Bridge Church website, and there's a tab right there, Godcast, you can listen to it that way. But that's really the ease. And we're building this. And what you're also hearing, brother, is over time things, you know, I'm like the carpenter, you know, like I'm... putting stuff together. I'm testing it. You're a big help, you know, like pushing back. You should nuke that. Nuke
that. Sometimes if it's real direct, that's from a net. I just say, hey, I'm driving, go, hey, would you tell, you know, so if it's real short to the point, that's a net. I'm a little more diplomatic. We were in the car on the way back from the movie Wednesday night and I'm like... Do you like this song? It was a worship. It was an elevation worship, but it was long and it was a little screechy. Where's you at? I don't know what you're talking about. This is not good.
And so I go, you know, hey Google, sorry if anyone's phone just triggered, remind me. And it went into this whole thing. It went, well, instead of just saying, okay, I set the reminder, it went into this. Well, Adam doesn't like this and it's probably because of Hello Fred that he had. And it's like, and I said, stop, stop. What are you doing? I had a whole bunch of AI stuff. We're going to save that for next week. Because there's actually good and fun stuff to
report. We had the Pope weigh in with his encyclical. In the fountain in DC that Trump finished. Oh, you mean... He's making Washington beautiful. He went on for 10 minutes. I watched the entire cabinet meeting. Someone actually made a song about it for no agenda. He was like, if you put this thing like a skyscraper, it'd be the tallest building in the world, and it's like an Olympic pool, and we took 11 containers of crap out of it. He's hilarious, man. It was a builder's conversation.
And, you know, I'm like, okay, we have some other stuff. But, you know, we have this rubberize it. We rubberize it. First we sandblast it. Then we pebble blast it. And the color is going to reflect much better. Everybody enjoy this moment. You will not see another president like this in your lifetime. Enjoy him while he's still with us. You know, one in maybe a billion. So we'll do that on Wednesday. Couple of things. I just want to give Brett Hahn another shout
out. I've been reading, he is like taking me on this journey. You and your Substack crew, man. I know, I'm all of a sudden into, I love Substack, man. It's not typical social media. That's what I like about it. I mean, long and short form articles, people writing, it's a supportive community. There's junk on here. Yeah, those people don't last on this one. He just wrote one called Whitfield in the open field. I haven't read it. I just came up. Five hours ago. I'm
like all, I'm going to read that today. I'm super excited about that. But Brett, and he listens to the podcast. So Brett, man, thank you so much, bro. Keep writing. Keep bringing us our original history, our actual history. And one of his things that I like he's doing, he wrote a book called Forged. And I love that because he's talking about what forged and formed the men that did these amazing, we see them as heroes now, right? Yeah. Well, I guess if you're on the right, you
do on the left. They're terrible. They're just bad guys. Old white men. Oh, sitting in a room making decisions for us. But yeah, so we see them as heroes and rock stars, but there was something that formed and forged that. So Brett does a great job of that. Just want to give him a shout out. Beau Lacoste. I need more pickles. I'm just straight up. I will pay you, Bo. Man, send us another batch. I know you're going to hit him up. I'll hit him up. We need more pickles.
I've got five left. What is Brett's Substack? What is his? Am Rev Resurrected. Am Rev, like American Revolution Resurrected. Am Rev Resurrected. So good. So yesterday, I'm not quite sure how it came up in the donation segment. And I said to John, because I I didn't know if he listens to no agenda or just we get to do this. I didn't really know. And so I said, well, you know, I got the Louisiana Pickles and Dvorak's like, what Pickles? I didn't get any Pickles. Who sent
you Pickles? I'm like, well, it's the Louisiana Pickles guy. I got an email right after the show. He says, I always listen to every show, even the donation segments all the way through. I'm sending John Pickles. Oh my gosh. Make sure you ask him what he thought about the labels. Because he always writes on top of them. Well, not just that, but all the script and description of the label itself. So this will be another ministering moment to Dvorak. Well, I'm giving Bo a shout
out because I need more pickles. My dad and I are going to fight over the last five in the jar. I've already eaten all the peppers and onions. And I've done everything but drink the juice. LouisianaPickles at Gmail. Man, the best pickles you will ever eat, I promise. And if you don't lock them, just send them to me and Adam will eat them. And we'll bless him. with anything you need to make that happen. Any other shout outs you want to give? I mean, we're just so
thankful. Hey, real quick, because we're good on time. Yeah, we're good. A little vision airing into where we're going with this podcast. Just a little. You don't have to get deep in the weeds. Well, merch. I know, right? Already. I think we're both listening to the Holy Spirit in this regard. We feel like there's something here. There's something we want to grow. Maybe not beyond the time limit per episode, but maybe
more. In the week, I mean, I'm also, you know, just looking at my life and sure where I want everything to go I love doing this. This is You know, there's a big crossover of people In my life who listen to this and and other things that I do I brought two or three More than two or three. I love how our church is listening and involved. We always kind of said, this is for our people here, our church, and like you pray in the beginning, if anyone else out there
is hearing it. I just feel like there's something here that we need to continue moving forward and building and growing. And like everything else, you know, are we really in control? Probably not. We just got to have ears to hear. That's it. And listen to our steps are ordered. Yes. And he delights in the details of our life. There it is. Brother, thank you for coming in on your vacation day for this. Hey, I want to do this.
Not only do I get to, I want to. And we will be back on Wednesday, just a few days until the next one. We get to do this. Have a great weekend, everybody. Get to do this